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Arkane Studios' upcoming Marvel's Blade game might have been given a budget of over $109 million, according to a recently uncovered report published on the French National Assembly site.
As highlighted by journalist Kilian Fichou on Twitter (and further shared by Wikipedia editor Timur222), the report was first published last year, discussing tax credit for game companies. The National Assembly is a part of the French Parliament, and, of course, the Blade game's developer is based in France, which is where it comes into things.
In the report (which we've machine-translated as it was published in French), it's claimed that Star Wars Eclipse from Quantic Dream was forecast a budget of 100 million euros (over $116 million at the current conversion rate), of which there was expected to be 73 million euros (almost $85 million) of expenditure in France between 2022 and 2025. The report then mentions a "new game" from Arkane Studios, which it doesn't refer to by name, but says it was "approved in 2023." Marvel's Blade was announced in late 2023 during The Game Awards, so that appears to line up.
This game, the report continues, apparently has a budget exceeding 94 million euros (over $109 million, roughly), of which there's reportedly expected to be 91 million euros (almost $106 million) of expenditure in France between 2023 and 2026.
Obviously, there's a chance that Arkane is secretly working on another game behind the scenes that it could be spending this money on, but Marvel's Blade is the only one we're aware of. It's also worth noting that the report mentioning 2026 doesn't necessarily mean that's when the game is planned to be launched – after all, the studio's financial statement for the last year recently revealed that an AAA game was able to enter the production phase by the end of 2024. If that was Marvel's Blade, then it doesn't sound like we can expect that on shelves any time soon.
Of course, $109 million is a lot of money, but it'd be far from the biggest-budget Marvel game we've seen. It's alleged that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 may have cost around $300 million to make, which is an enormous difference. More money doesn't necessarily make a better game, of course, although Spider-Man 2 is definitely one of the best PS5 games. Who knows how the two will compare when Marvel's Blade eventually launches?
