Full post: 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

To address some frequently asked questions:

• These are US and Canada productions. If you're wondering why game X cost so much less, it was probably made elsewhere
• These budgets are almost entirely dev salaries + overheard and have nothing to do with executive compensation (which is mostly stock)