Naughty Dog co-founder Andrew Gavin spoke openly about why Sony acquired the studio in 2001.
In a lengthy LinkedIn post, Gavin cited the rising costs of game development as one of the reasons the studio was sold, saying it was “a systemic problem in the AAA space” where developers “almost never have the resources to finance their own games. […] gives editors enormous influence.
“Why did we sell Naughty Dog? It's a question I've been asked countless times. The answer is simple: budgets were exploding,” said Gavin, who worked at Naughty Dog for nearly 20 years before leaving in 2004, (to via Gameranx). .
“When we founded Naughty Dog in the 1980s, game development expenses were manageable. We started everything by investing profits from one game into the next. Our early '80s games cost less than $50,000 each to create. Rings of Power ('88-91), saw its budgets increase to about $100,000, but made a little more than that in after-tax profits in 1992.
“In 1993, we invested that $100,000 from Rings into a self-financed Way of the Warrior. But making Crash Bandicoot ('94-96) cost $1.6 million. By the time we got to Jak and Daxter ('99-01), the budget surpassed the $15 million mark.
“By 2004, the cost of AAA games like Jak 3 had skyrocketed to $45-$50 million, and has continued to rise since then,” Gavin added. “But in 2000, we were still self-funding every project, and the stress of funding these growing budgets independently was enormous.
“It wasn't just us. This was (and still is) a systemic problem in the AAA space. Developers almost never have the resources to finance their own games, which gives publishers enormous leverage. Selling to Sony is not It was just about ensuring a financial future for Naughty Dog. It was about giving the studio the resources to continue making the best games possible, without being crushed by the weight of skyrocketing costs and the paralyzing fear that one slip would ruin everything.
“Looking back, it was the right decision.”
Gavin ended by admitting that “AAA games have only gotten more expensive since then,” citing that the costs of today's big-budget games “easily” exceed “$300, $400, or even $500 million.”
“Would we have been able to keep up? Maybe. But selling, to the right party, gave Naughty Dog the stability it needed to thrive and continue creating the kind of games we had always dreamed of.”
Several months after studio head Neil Druckmann confirmed that Naughty Dog had several games in the works, the team lifted the lid on its next all-new title: Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet for PS5.
“Set thousands of years in the future, Intergalactic puts players in the role of Jordan A. Mun, a dangerous bounty hunter who ends up stranded on Sempiria, a distant planet whose communication with the outside universe was interrupted hundreds of years ago,” he teases. . the propaganda.
“Jordan will have to use all his skills and ingenuity if he hopes to be the first person in over 600 years to leave its orbit,” reads the game's official blurb.