Shuhei Yoshida Says AAA Budgets Nearly Doubled from PS4 to PS5 Era - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 July 2025 / 5,930 Views
Former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida in an interview on the Kit and Krysta Podcast, has revealed the cost to develop AAA games has doubled from the PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5 era.
I saw some analysis or estimate of one same franchise released during PS4 era and PS5 era generation double the budget," said Yoshida (via VideoGamer). "And that has reached the point that we cannot recoup this investment."
Yoshida thinks something needs to be done about the increasing development costs as this isn't sustainable.
"So this generation, PS5 generation, I think is the first time that the industry really, truly believes that you know there has to be something that has to be done," said Yoshida.
Yoshida says AAA PS5 games are too expensive to develop.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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"Help us, Astrobot. You're our only hope."
I have wanted to buy astrobot since it came out. But never actually pulled the trigger. Is it as good as the reviews suggest?
Yes, it's great.
Maybe even better than the reviews. Genuinely loved every single second of that game.
Even the free game, Astro's Playground, was great fun.
One of the best games of the generation, in my opinion.
In my opinion it is a bit overrated (yeah, yeah, downvote me because you don't like my opinion), but it is still good fun from start to finish.
If you are unsure, play the free Astros Playroom and see how you like it. Astrobot is basically that as a full-length game.
I do agree, but it goes back to all the 3D Mario games. I think games tended to get reviewed in the context of similar games. So, a game like Odyssey being a 97 is very problematic and obvious ridiculous. Compare that to Super Mario Wonder, which is a 91 but arguably the best 2d platformer ever made, but it's review scores are in the context of games like the new super Mario bros. games.
So, a better question is: Is Astro Bot within 3 points of Odyssey? Yeah, it probably is. Seems reasonably fair.
Odyssey and astrobot are hard to compare. Odyssey has large open sandboxes and focus more on exploration. While astrobot is focused on short linear levels. Astrobot is more comparable to 3d world and the galaxy games in what it aims to achieve. For comparison the switch version of 3d world with bowsers fury is 5 points lower than astrobot, kirby and the forgotten land is 9 points lower, it takes two is 6 points lower, psychonauts 2 is 7 points lower, crash 4 is 9 points lower. I don't think astrobot is worse than any of these games but I also don't think that it is much better either.
I have no idea why you think Odyssey at 97 is "problematic and obviously ridiculous", while you think Wonder is the best 2d platformer ever (you'd be hard pressed to find other people with anywhere close to that view). Seems like you just like Wonder a lot more than most people, and like Odyssey less than most people. Odyssey was incredible, Wonder was a solid game, though certainly much better than NSMBUD. Sounds like you just don't like 3D platformers all that much. To most people Odyssey and Astrobot's scores make perfect sense, while Wonder seems a bit high at 91 and is probably more due to the fact that it's not yet another game from the stale New series so was a breath of fresh air at least for the series.
It's a really solid platformer. I'd give it a 8/10, definitely worth a try especially if you're a fan of more linear platformers.
How has it doubled? I thought mark cerny said this generation will allow for games to be made quicker .
I have not seen anything this generation that looks more higher budget than what we got last gen,
This doesn't sound like a problem for consumers...
Games don't need to cost 300-500 Million Dollars when they barely look any better than last generation
Publishers need to learn how to plan and budget better with smaller teams
Not every game can sell 20M copies at full price
Then focus on games with smaller budgets.
Publishers: "So what you're telling us is that we should fire human developers and replace them with generative AI..."
So out of touch. -_-
Me, or publishers? I'm somewhat of a Luddite that doesn't want soulless technology taking jobs away from people.
The publishers.
And this is only the costs for games that actually release. This gen in general has a lot of cancelled games, sometimes pretty far in development.
So...stop increasing the budgets??? Gamers want games. Not overpaying hollywood actors to take voice actor jobs. We don't need to see every pore or hair strand. Focus on the fun and stop "requiring" 300+ person projects.
Same problem with animated movies. Every major voice acting role now goes to a big name actor. Mario is an Italian American, but somehow sounds like Chris Pratt.
Bring on the smaller budget indies!
They're not recouping investments cause they're funding trash like Concord and pushing towards live-service games with studios that don't have any experience in them, while at the same time, cancelling their games mid-development. Meanwhile, their recently acquired studio that does have experience, Bungie, is stuck sitting on their asses while their CEO buys his 14th Maserati this year.
It would be interesting to see the cost breakdown of a AAA game.
I assume most of it is salaries for hundreds of people over several years.
What if they started making more cell shaded games. Would that bring down budget?
Yeah, the costs doubled and so did the revenues and profits. I realize he no longer works there, but I wish execs, and previous execs would stop trying to justify anti-consumer practices by giving only one side of an argument.
Everything is increasing,
gaming is becoming more beyond luxury
they should of kept studio japan going was some great smaller titles released by them
The studio employed more people than most of their AAA studios, therefore it cost more to run.
Wow, downvoted for posting facts that don’t align with people’s preconceived biases.
Tokyo Studio ~400 employees
Sucker punch during GoT -180
Santa Monica studio during GoW(2018) -200
Housemarque during Returnal -80
Team Asobi during Astro Bot -80
Guerilla games during H;ZD - 200
Bend during Days Gone - 120
Insomniac during Spider-man - 300
That matches with budget information we have seen elsewhere. Various official AAA budgets we have seen from the 8th generation (2013-2019) range from about $70m to $160m , with the average for the gen seeming to be around $110m for a AAA release. Meanwhile so far this generation most of the AAA budgets that have leaked out or been officially released have been way higher, the lowest two we have seen were just $70m and $75m (Black Myth Wukong and Alan Wake 2), but others we have seen have been higher; Cyberpunk 2077 ($316m for the base game plus another $125m spent fixing the base game and making the expansion), TLOU Part 2 ($220m), Horizon Forbidden West ($212m), Spiderman Miles Morales ($213m), Immortals of Aveum ($125m), The Callisto Protocol ($162m), Spiderman 2 ($315m), Spiderman 3 ($385m budget expected as of the time of Sony's big leak).
Miles mores is something like $81m dev budget, that Wikipedia page is wrong
Based on the documents that leaked out in that big hack a couple years back, Miles Morales had a development budget of $81.5m, a marketing budget of $25m, and a licensing fee of $106m for Disney's share of the Spiderman rights, which nearly doubled the total budget to $213m.
The licensing fee is not an upfront cost, it's a percentage of all sales that go to Marvel. That's the amount Marvel had earned at that point in time with 14m unit sales.
Counting it as part of the cost is the same as counting the platform commission of 30% to PS/Xbox/Steam. Elden Ring sold like $500m on PSN and they paid $150m in licensing fees to sony. Similar to Steam and Xbox. That doesn't mean the game cost $500m to make though.
Also, shuhei is specifically talking about cost to Develop. Marketing costs are not relavent to this either. Miles Morales cost $81.7m to develop, Alan Wake II cost 50m euros etc.
Cyberpunk and TLoU 2 are PS4 games.
True, but they were released at the tail end of the generation, and show how costs had already started to ramp up by that point, even before the post-Covid inflation and new hardware development baseline.
Tlou2 is no better than tlou1. Uncharted 2 and 3 look better than most PS4 games, what was the budget for those?
And for what? Sandfall Interactive just created the Game of the Year with a fraction of the budget of an AAA game.
It is true that the development cost was twice as much for the PS3 and PS5 era, but I do not believe there is such a cost difference between the PS4 and PS5. If they didn't spend $200-300 million on stupid shooters they could make games like Days Gone 2.
Do you know the days gone 2 pitch was for a fully co-op shared world game? Wouldn't that be another stupid shooter?
You're assuming I'm calling all shooter games stupid, except for the examples I mentioned. What's really happening is that billions of dollars worth of budgets have been wasted on canceled games and massively unsuccessful releases.
