AAA games are expensive.

Leading publishers in the gaming industry have revealed how much they spend on developing and marketing AAA titles. The results are shocking to say the least. The publishers, on the other hand did not disclose these costs. The British regulatory agency CMA included this information in its report, which was used to prevent the Microsoft-Activision merge.

Regulators, such as the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA), who thwarted Microsoft’s merger with Activision and investigated the video game market in general are gathering and reporting a vast amount of data on the largest entertainment industry. CMA’s report on Microsoft-Activision revealed that AAA games have astronomically expensive budgets. You may be aware that AAA games, which are big budget titles, now cost 70 dollars. It seems the reasons for this are quite sound.

Total costs could reach 1.2 billion dollars

CMA’s report excludes publishers, and for good reason. We can, however, assume that these are the leading publishers, such as Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), Electronic Arts (EA), Take-Two Interactive, Take-Two Interactive, and perhaps Ubisoft. Some publishers spend up to $1.2 billion for the development and marketing of a franchise.

The CMA has reported the total amount of money spent by the four publishers without naming them. Publishers reported spending between 100 million euros and 660 millions during the game development stage. The marketing costs can reach 50 million Euros or 550 million. The publisher, who is likely to be Ubisoft in this case, is said to have allocated 150 million euros for AAA game development and 50 million euros for marketing. CMA states that Activision’s games, such as the Call of Duty and Warcraft games, have “significantly” higher development costs than other games.