Naughty Dog co-founder Andrew Gavin revealed on his LinkedIn page the main reason behind the studio losing its independence and going under the wing of Sony. Like always, it revolves around money, and we talk about game production budgets.

Naughty Dog used to fund all its games on its own, and that led to a huge stress on top management. The strain of managing ever-increasing budgets was gigantic, Gavin admitted. All studios have faced it and continue to face it, the executive wrote.

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  1. How much did it cost to produce Naughty Dog games?
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How much did it cost to produce Naughty Dog games?

  • In the 80s, Naughty Dog spent less than fifty thousand dollars on each title.
  • Rings of Power had a budget of about 100 thousand dollars
  • First Crash Bandicoot cost $1.6M.
  • Jak and Daxter had a budget of more than 15 million dollars.

Gavin believes that considering the current trends in the industry, the decision to sell the studio to Sony was correct. He noted that development budgets for big AAA games are now capable of exceeding $300-500 million dollars. What the budget of newest Naughty Dog game would be? Would be interesting to learn in twenty years.

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