Nobody needs reminding of how precarious the games industry is right now, since layoffs and studio closures continue to happen with horrendous regularity. A large contributor to these problems is rising budgets, as figures are purportedly in the hundreds of millions for many triple-A games, and rising still.
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier provides some insight, based on his extensive interviews and reporting within the industry. "Exact budgets of video game productions can be tough to corroborate but the numbers I've heard floating around AAA game dev these days are $300 million or more," he says on Bluesky.
"Sometimes much more," he adds, "which I think helps explain the current state of the industry," just to drive the point home. In a follow-up post, he clarifies that this is primarily based on budgets in America and Canada, so if there's a large disparity, it's likely because a game is being made somewhere else. "Dev salaries and overhead" account for most of the costs, he says, as executives get most of their payouts through stocks.
Exact budgets of video-game productions can be tough to corroborate (more transparency from publishers would be nice!) but the numbers I've heard floating around AAA game dev these days are $300 million or more — sometimes much more! — which I think helps explain the current state of the industry
— @jasonschreier.bsky.social (@jasonschreier.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-03-26T15:54:59.478Z
$300 million-plus is a serious baseline for any medium. For comparison, that's lower than most Hollywood blockbusters: Zootopia 2, A Minecraft Movie, Lilo & Stitch, and Jurassic World: Rebirth all released last year, and reportedly cost sub-$250 million to make.
When you consider how development cycles are getting longer and longer, it's not hard to imagine budgets winding up this way. The Elder Scrolls 6 will have probably been in the works for over a decade by the time it comes out, and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet from Naughty Dog won't be far behind once it hits shelves.
Both Bethesda and Naughty Dog are huge companies with hundreds of employees across several departments. That's a lot of sunk cost for something to reach players, and that's before noting the latter is based in California, a particularly expensive part of the US.
But while the numbers may be understandable, sustainability is another question. Epic Games just let over 1,000 people go, on the heels of EA and Ubisoft making cuts as well. However the industry proceeds, it's pretty clear something may need to change.
