Which Had a Bigger Budget, Last of Us 2 or Horizon Forbidden West? Sony Spilled the Beans
The budgets for The Last of Us: Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West were not supposed to come out, but Sony did not make an effort with the redaction of court documents.
The court battle over the Activision Blizzard acquisition remains unresolved, with the side effect of Microsoft and Sony revealing many interesting information. Admittedly, documents are subject to censorship, but in the case of a certain today's text, the latter company didn't make too much of an effort to hide the data on the budgets of The Last of Us: Part II and Horizon Forbidden West.
As noted by journalist Tom Warren from The Verge (via Twitter), the document discussing the issue has been redacted with little effort, as the the letters and, above all, the numbers that were supposed to be hidden remain legible, which made Internet users laugh.
As it turns out, between 2014 and 2020, Sony spent about $220 million on the development of the second The Last of Us, and on the sequel to Horizon: Zero Dawn (being developed between 2017 and 2022) - $212 million. A total of 200 and 300 full-time developers worked on the projects, respectively.
Unhappily for fans of financial statistics, the excerpt shared by Warren lacked data on marketing spendings, which, according to Sony, are said to be very expensive even for well-known brands.
This is yet another secret that was revealed today as part of the process for Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The president of the former - Bobby Kotick - spilled the beans regarding the Switch's successor, which still has not been confirmed by Nintendo.
