Not as expensive as before, but still quite costly.
Hideo Kojima saved his “biggest selling” game, as he describes it, from Sony’s cancellation, but it seems the company simply did not want to dish out hundreds of millions of dollars to support a title that wouldn’t release before the next decade. Still, the exact figure isn’t so certain yet, and while some sources claimed Kojima asked for $400 million, it appears XBOX got the game for a significantly smaller sum.
That is according to several notable journalists, including Chris Dring of Game Business. As shared by Idol Sloth on X, Dring said that the budget for PHYSINT—which, mind you, doesn’t even have an engine yet—is around $400 million, but that could be the figure Kojima purportedly gave to Sony before XBOX swooped in. Jez Corden of Windows Central outright denied the figure.
“I was told similarly by first-hand sources with direct knowledge of the contracts that the figure for PHYSINT is far lower than what is being reported here,” Corden wrote, adding that XBOX is apparently paying a “fraction” of the reported cost, despite the fact that Kojima has already signed major movie stars and started using 3Lateral’s scanning studios, which aren’t cheap whatsoever.
Jason Schreier provided additional context on ResetEra but did not want to put out any specific numbers. “I am hesitant to get into exact numbers without seeing documentation or corroborating them with multiple firsthand sources,” he said.
“And there are a lot of different numbers here. There’s the number Physint was originally signed for at PlayStation, the number it was approaching, the number that came up during negotiations, the number it would have been with certain A-list actors attached, the number that Xbox agreed to, and the number it will actually cost by the time it comes out.”
At any rate, Schreier concludes, what he’s heard is that PHYSINT is going to cost “significantly less” than $400 million.
But that does not mean the game will be inexpensive. Just for the actors alone, I expect double-digit millions of dollars, and using Epic’s MetaHuman technology via 3Lateral is probably going to up the costs by a massive margin. Add the salaries of the developers into the mix—which are far lower in Japan than in Silicon Valley—and we’re looking easily at figures exceeding one or two hundred million dollars. Perhaps even more. A lot more.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.destructoid.com/physint-budget-rumors/
