Horizon: Zero Dawn Has a Bigger Budget Than The Last Guardian, Says Sony

by Ryan Oehrli Fri 26th Jun 2015

Even if it's endured one of the worst development cycles in gaming history, The Last Guardian still has a smaller budget than Guerrilla Games' new franchise, Horizon: Zero Dawn. That's what Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony's Worldwide Studios, told Eurogamer.net earlier today.

After being asked if The Last Guardian was one of the most expensive games that Sony's worked on, the executive dropped a bit of a surprise, saying: "No, no, not at all. The team is much smaller. Teams in Japan are much smaller in general than teams in the US and Europe... Horizon is a much bigger budget title than The Last Guardian! It's not so small; it's much bigger than ICO or Shadow of the Colossus, but it's not a US or European-style budget."

The Japanese giant has been pushing Horizon pretty hard lately, and even if its E3 conference was chock-full of surprising comebacks, it's been keen to remind the press that a new IP is on the way, too. Are you surprised by this? Do the math in the comments below.

[source eurogamer.net]

1
get2sammyb
Fri 26th Jun 2015

I'm not massively surprised by this to be honest. It sounds like they had to rebuild a lot of the game for the PS4, so I imagine they had a core team of engineers re-programming it for at least 18 months of its hiatus.

Also worth remembering that Japan Studio tends to shift staff around depending on requirements. The bulk of the studio's probably only recently switched to this, as they were previously busy with Knack and Puppeteer.

2
Ewflex
Fri 26th Jun 2015

Japan games don't look as good as most European of US games except for msg games because hideo is mild s movie director. I can't tell you how many Japanese games have great cutscenes then when you see the game itself I looks like a old school game. The last guardian looks like a smaller budget game and IMO it looks like a PS3 game.

3
rjejr
Sat 27th Jun 2015

Maybe Japanese employees are just paid a whole lot less than their western counterparts, but the companies are better run, less bloat for things like espresso makers and private jets. It's all about the padding. Think "billable hours".

4
Riririn
Sat 27th Jun 2015

@rjejr I don't know about that, but I know they work for longer periods in one go. I've heard horror stories where the lead devs and directors basically sleep at work and barely have time for eating. Especially those big games that people expect to have soon. Energy drinks sell well in Japan. lol

Not working as a game dev doesn't mean you'll have more time either. It's not a secret or anything that Japanese people work themselves to death. So much that many don't even have time for their families, they'll have time eating dinner with them LATE if they are lucky. Then again, not like the kids have much time anyway with their club activities and extra classes in the evening.