Summary
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Call of Duty games set new records with budgets reaching $700 million.
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Black Ops Cold War's $700 million budget surpasses even Star Citizen.
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Rising AAA game budgets highlight rising costs in the video game industry.
Activision has revealed the budgets of three call of Duty games, some of which reach impressive figures ranging from $450 to $700 million. These huge ones call of Duty development budgets mark the highest ever for the franchise, with Black Ops Cold War above.
Making video games is no small feat. The development process usually takes many years and costs companies a large amount of effort and money. While some indie games are widely known for being developed with relatively small budgets raised on platforms like Kickstarter, the AAA realm is quite different. The prices of blockbuster titles have increased year after year, surpassing classic games that were considered “expensive” at the time. Among the most expensive games ever made are Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077AND The Last of Us Part 2. However, none of these come close to the recently revealed budgets call of Duty titles.
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As reported by Game File, the creative head of Activision call of Duty franchise, Patrick Kelly, revealed in a California court on December 23 the budgets for Black operations 3, Modern warfare (2019) e Black Ops Cold Warwith the latter exceeding $700 million in development costs. It took Activision many years to complete the game and it sold more than 30 million copies. This number is followed by Modern warfarewhere Infinity Ward invested more than $640 million in development, selling 41 million copies. And finally, Black operations 3with the smallest budget of the three at $450 million, it still doubles the $220 million development cost The Last of Us Part 2.
Black Ops Cold War surpassed $700 million in development costs
THE Black Ops Cold War the budget is the highest ever seen in video games, even higher Star Citizenare the huge development costs of $644 million. This is surprising given this Black Ops Cold War was financed by a single company, while Star Citizen received crowdfunding funding over a period of 11 years.
It's interesting to think about how much similar games cost Black operations 6 could have increased since the debut of Black Ops Cold War in 2020. Budgets increase every year, according to the trend. For example, the 1997 version of Final Fantasy7which was a graphic and technical revolution, cost 40 million dollars, which was considered a huge budget at the time. Now, that amount seems insignificant compared to the current prices of AAA games. The budgets recently made public by Activision are unmistakable evidence of the video game industry's rising costs.
