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You can feel the budget pouring out of the screen while you play 007 First Light, so I’m not overly surprised to learn the game cost around $200 million to make.
Danish media is reporting the release is the country’s most expensive entertainment export ever, costing an eye-watering 1.3 billion kroner to create.
The game’s been in development for about seven years, and it’s unclear how much of that budget involves licensing fees from 007 rights holder, Amazon. There’s also no word on whether the expense includes marketing, too.
The good news is that the title’s off to a strong start, selling 1.5 million copies within one day. Word of mouth is very strong, and everyone I’ve spoken to seems to be really enjoying it.
Personally, it’s already one of my favourite games of the year. While I wish there was a bit more agency in the sandbox levels, I think the stealth is great fun and I’m shocked by the overall quality of the writing and pacing.
I think a lot of the script here could easily pass for a full-fledged Bond movie, which is a big compliment.
Depending on how the budget breaks down, it’ll probably be a while before IOI turns a profit on this project. Accounting for platform fees, for example, it’ll probably need to sell between four and five million copies to break even.
But I think it’s comfortably going to achieve that, and I expect this title to have a very long tail through word of mouth and future TacSim updates, which the dev has already promised.
It does go to show how risky funding a modern AAA title is right now, and it’s perhaps a reminder of why publishers are so risk averse and why many titles are getting cancelled.
But fortunately I think IOI absolutely nailed this one, and I imagine future 007 instalments should be a bit cheaper and easier to make with all it’s learned over the past few years.