It has been no secret that the gaming industry has been struggling with budgets that keep growing larger and larger. In a social media post, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has noted that modern budgets for AAA games tend to hit, and sometimes even go over, the $300 million mark.
While he hasn’t been able to corroborate precise budgets for AAA games, he noted that the current state of the industry, which is seeing many lay-offs and studio closures, could be explained by these incredibly-high budgets.
“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,” wrote Schreier on BlueSky.
He went on to specify that these figures only apply to games being made in the US and Canada. Other regions might see large games despite smaller budgets depending on their market conditions. Along with this, he has also noted that these budgets tend to almost entirely revolve around developer salaries and potential overhead costs. Executive compensation isn’t considered a part of these budgets, since the money there largely tends to involve company stocks.
Back in July 2025, former PlayStation executive Shuhei Yoshida had also made a note of these massive development budgets. He spoke about how companies used to feel that spending more money on things like “beautiful graphics and realistic-looking characters” would lead to more time spent by buyers in a game.
“It may be counterintuitive but, you know, if we spent enough money to make the big game, you know, the chance of success felt increased because everybody wanted to play bigger games [with] more beautiful graphics and more realistic-looking characters, more gameplay hours,” said Yoshida.
However, this strategy had a major downside, with fewer and fewer small-scale games being greenlit thanks to budgets being taken up with major sequels or blockbuster titles. Yoshida also confirmed that games have been more expensive to develop during the PS4 and PS5 console generations than they had been in the past.
“I saw some analysis or estimate of one same franchise released during PS4 era and PS5 era generation double the budget, and that has reached… the point that we cannot recoup this investment,” said Yoshida. “So this generation, PS5 generation, I think is the first time that the industry really, truly believes that you know there has to be something that has to be done.”
Looking outside of US and Canada, it isn’t difficult to spot games made on tighter budgets. Last year’s award-winning RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, for instance, was made with a budget of less than $10 million. This, developer Sandfall Interactive noted, was thanks to it avoiding an open-world approach and instead focusing on core RPG gameplay.
On the other side of the spectrum, Grand Theft Auto 6 will likely be a massive game in more ways than just gameplay. Analysts believe that the title’s development budget will exceed $1.5 billion by the time it comes out on November 19th.
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
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier.bsky.social) 2026-03-25T20:38:45.547Z
