Sony acquired Naughty Dog amidst ‘ballooning budgets,’ says founder

Andy Gavin, who co-founded Naughty Canine with Jason Rubin in 1986, is a surprisingly prolific LinkedIn poster who has just lately been sharing some recollections concerning the firm’s early days. This week, he posted about the state of the studio’s finances over the years, describing how a lot it price to make a few of Naughty Canine’s early video games and the way these ever-increasing figures led the studio heads to conform to a Sony acquisition in 2000.

“Our early 80s video games price lower than $50,000 every to make,” Gavin wrote. “Rings of Energy (‘88-91), noticed budgets rise to about $100,000, however yielded barely greater than that in after tax income in 1992. In 1993, we rolled that $100k from Rings right into a self funded Method of the Warrior. However Crash Bandicoot (‘94-96) price $1.6 million to make. By the point we obtained to Jak and Daxter (‘99-01), the funds busted the $15 million mark. By 2004, the price of AAA video games like Jak 3 had soared to $45-50 million — and so they have been rising ever since.”

All of that led as much as the Sony acquisition. As Gavin put it, “the stress of financing these ballooning budgets independently was huge. […] Promoting to Sony wasn’t nearly securing a monetary future for Naughty Canine. It was about giving the studio the sources to maintain making the most effective video games doable, with out being crushed by the burden of skyrocketing prices and the paralyzing worry that one slip would damage all of it.”

Gavin’s submit has sparked some debate within the feedback, together with from others who work within the video games trade. James Marcus, a senior artist engaged on Splitgate 2 for 1047 Video games, responded: “It’s unhappy that the fee have risen a lot. This has created an area the place far too many builders take much less artistic dangers or promote to giant companies to keep away from bankrupting after a doable failed product.”

There are, in fact, potential downsides for studios getting acquired by huge firms like Sony. Specifically, restructuring and layoffs (Naughty Canine was additionally impacted by Sony’s 2024 spherical of cuts). For Firewalk Studios, the studio that made Harmony, getting acquired by Sony in 2023 didn’t appear to do a lot to assist the sport or studio’s future in any respect. In spite of everything, said studio was unceremoniously shut down shortly after Harmony launched. So, little bit of a blended bag relating to getting acquired by Sony. The ballooning costs of AAA video games, nonetheless, are an plain actuality.