CMA Report Reveals AAA Games Could Cost Over $1 Billion to Make

Last week, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, citing concerns about its impact on cloud gaming. In addition to the significant impact on both companies' futures, the accompanying document released by the CMA has shed some light on the growing financial demands of AAA games.

The regulator's extensive report on the decision revealed that certain major publishers had reported costs of over $1 billion for producing their AAA games. This is a significant increase from a rough estimate of approximately $50 to $150 million just five years ago.

The report highlights that producing AAA games on modern platforms can cost $200 million or more. It specifically reveals that new additions to the Call of Duty franchise have development budgets exceeding $300 million, while Grand Theft Auto VI is reported to have a budget of over $250 million. 

Additionally, one publisher revealed to the CMA that a major AAA franchise cost them $660 million to produce, excluding the marketing budget, which exceeded $500 million. This amounts to a staggering $1 billion in total. 

The CMA's report also provided new insights into the growing development demands of the latest Call of Duty titles. Activision was quoted as saying that the high content requirements for each annual release of the game mean the company can no longer rely on just one lead studio.

"Now we need almost 1.5 lead studios for each annual CoD. That kind of bandwidth pressure is forcing us to use outsourcers more and more," the company stated.

To put it simply, the development and release of Call of Duty demand an extraordinary amount of both financial and human resources. According to Activision, this situation is not expected to change in the foreseeable future.

You can find the CMA's report here. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.