I had a topic like this before, about having more games with a AA budget but I will add movies here because this overbudgeting is a concern for both.
The $200 million loss or more I am speaking of is Concord and supposedly now consoles must have their prices raised in Japan to make up the difference. At least when Wii Music failed, Miyamoto acknowledged it and took the financial hit not the other employees and CERTAINLY not the price of the console.
Before anyone wants to argue politics with Concord I am going to checkmate this and just say Resident Evil 6. It was bad and just NOT a Resident Evil game by any stretch and from what I heard nearly bankrupted the company. Sony had to bankroll SF5 and that was one of the things that definitely helped get them back on their feet.
So I repeat, stop overbudgeting and letting this bloat get out of hand. For example, let us look at Disney before Bob Iger went on a high budget lark with all the MCU films. It was a LOT easier to make the money BACK because you had realistic budgets. They also understood the logic of having an Arthouse film wing because when those films hit, big or moderately, they really helped put the studios in the black because of how reasonable the budgets were.
Now I think with games I admit there are arguably more pressures to keep up with the Jones' but let us look at Ookami. That game was created with that art style BECAUSE of the PS2's limitations and ended up becoming a big hit. Conversely instead of getting trapped in the spec. AAA arms race, having to enable RT and every other bell and whistle which makes things rapidly unaffordable why not take the Ookami treatment and experiment with different gameplay mechanics and even different visual perspectives?
I know of at least 1 VTuber now talking about the wow factor wearing off on him more and more pointing out most of the major leaps forward in 3D are largely behind us and I think he has a point. I believe it was Linus who made this point.
It is worth giving a shot I think to do a lower budget, more stylized and creative game and at least if it sells well but not insanely you are still well in the black.

Paragraphs really seem to be a lost art sometimes. A carriage return between 4 sentences or so really helps bolster readability.

Anyways, how does that quote go?

"I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less, and I'm not kidding"? I think you've arrived at this point.

You could at least spell Ōkami correctly, since she's the actual Japanese word for an extinct species of gray wolf.

Moore's Law has indeed reached it's logical limit, and to be frank, I'd rather just let Hollywood flounder and tumble onto it's back so we can have several smaller studios across the world filling in the gap, instead of hacks like Adam Sandler being able to use a movie as an excuse to play golf in Jakarta or something.

Sad thing is Sandler is not a bad dramatic actor but those movies he does don't sell for shit since everyone wants him to be the clown every freaking time so that is what he has to go back to. But I understand your point.
Can I give an honorable mention for "House Bunny" to trying to have someone be hit in the breast by another woman as a gag being halfway funny. After all, people laughed all the time at men getting hit in the privates so fair is fair.

Hollywood's biggest issue is they don't just jump onto fads with the movies themselves but especially the tools. After "Jurassic Park" and others were a hit they were really quick to adopt CGI and drop practical effects like a hot potato even though the latter can be cheaper. I watched a Korean film or TV show that wasted time making a CGI shot of a freaking rain drop when they could have just used one of those digital cameras that shoots at 20,000 frames per second instead. You just delete the excess footage as it is not like slomo on film where you had to use PILES of films to shoot that.
My concern in replacing Hollywood is to put restraints on those that would take their places. Like in South Korea the same problem happens with young girls/women and if you say no you can get blacklisted. If you would rather it not be that way I understand but Korean Drama's are very likely to largely fill Hollywood's gap more than anyone. I could see Indian and South Korea largely sharing the film space though.
Oh and it remains to be seen if South Korea will then be smart and print on economics of scale. If you look at the costs to pick up Blu-ray or DVD boxsets of Korean Drama's in Korea it is absurd. It is like they could care less if people pirate. Anyone that thinks I am joking look at the actual prices.

Woke games are always equally terrible whether they are AAA, or AA, or indie.

Lowering their budget doesn't help.

All devs/pubs need to stop inserting their personal ideologies into their games. Them doing that is the core of the problem, one which has been wrecking almost the entirety of the games industry for the past decade or so.

Simply adding or subtracting money from them won't do anything to fix that problem. It's an ideological problem, not a money problem.

Facepalms. What did I say above, it doesn't even have to be ideological. Resident Evil 6 was the worst game in the series in my opinion and because Capcom spent so much it nearly bankrupted them. That game wasn't Hollywoke at all, it was just bad.

In your opinion, how much is an "AA" game supposed to cost in terms of budget?

@OP - I think you maybe mean overspending, not over budgeting. Budget by definition means some kind of controlled situation, where things are accounted for.

But if you do mean over budgeting, then that can be a good thing, if it means a green light and some flexibility built in.

In any case, the whole issue is subjective. There are so many factors at play, and the biggest issue is not having enough foresight or not looking at longer term benefits.

Do many studios over extend themselves? Seems pretty obvious they do.

I'd also suggest that doing a budget for a game and sticking to it, either ruins a game or is pure luck .. or maybe one of the few really knew what they were doing. It has to be notoriously hard to account for all things, and there are a few documentaries around that will take you through it all.

What really matters is the end result, but so often it is about limited financial backing and not that. Often it is folk with the wrong mentality, who don't really understand how game creation works, that are doing the financial backing, and they certainly don't approach with long term thinking. In many cases it is about a quick megabuck, and they often don't really care what state the game ends up in, hence the very many that never get proper bug fixes.

As gamers we should be forcing them to take the longer view. Part of that means not buying at high prices on release. In that case, having faith shows how much they are truly behind a game. Same applies to movies and TV shows.

They just need to do what needs to be done ... within reason ... which requires the necessary understanding.

Well probably overspending most times but in the case of Spiderman 2 I don't think it needed to cost $200 million. They could have given them an extra 10-20 million to work with and firmly drew the line.
In the case of Concord I think it was bloat even though it was in development for at least 8 years. Look at MGSV, that was 5 years and cost $75-80 million and Konami STILL whined about it. I think of AA games cost double digits millions at BEST and no more and I will condition that as being in this era.
I think Nintendo has good sense in mind for budgeting and how much should be spent as well as developers who make Switch exclusives.

It may or may not impact people currently alive today (and it may be farther into the future than you are interested in), but I think at some point, ultra-realistic AAA games as we expect them today with every-increasing gpu requirements may very well become a thing of the past.

As long as we have accessible computing, indie games will be a thing and there might be room for AA games, but I'm not convinced we can keep spitting 5-10 millions brand new consummer gpus each year indefinitely (in addition to whatever AI and crypto uses).

I think any of the following scenarios are feasible at some point in the future:
- You have a big computing box that lasts you pretty much your entire life with components that you replace (or preferably repair if at all possible) when they break
- You have computers that don't last you your entire life (but might still last you decades), but they are much less bulky than today (anywhere from a raspberry pi to a small laptop)
- You have powerful computers that are updated regularly, but they are shared by a bunch of people and you need to reserve time

I don't think any of the above scenario are compatible with the business model of AAA games (which currently depend on hundreds of people constantly pushing the technical boundary of what is possible in gaming in terms of realistic visuals and physics).

Strange examples. No amount of budget cuts could have saved Concord.

One thing if a game or film costs, say, £300,000,000 to create but then they use as much to market it. I doubt the last third of that marketing budget really brings in more than those 100 million in revenue.

Yeah I agree. I feel like the marketing spending is a relic of the old media structure and mentality. Look how "Blair Witch" and "Paranormal Activity" got crazy numbers with smart, VIRAL marketing that cost a fraction of what even the movie did and those were low budget.
As for the person thinking I am defending Concord, I don't disagree it was unlikely to be a success but $100 million spent or especially less on an absolute failure hurts a LOT less than $200 million or more. Look how Suicide Squad and both Concord effected their respective companies. Sony is increasing the price of the PS5 now as a consequence.
Magnitus I don't mind the first two scenarios but absolutely HATE the 3rd one. That is only a practical solution for TV sets when you are watching a TV show or movie with someone. The current AAA market was bound to start to be untenable at this point, the most beloved games were PS4 and before and most of those teams were easily 100 or less. My favorite game for that generation far and away was Gravity Rush 2 but then I prefer old Sega stuff when they were incredibly creative with the Dreamcast and Saturn. "Cursed Mountain", "Madworld", "Folklore" and maybe like 2 others were the big ones especially for me for the previous generation.

I only know of one Concord and it stopped flying... well over a decade a go.

While I understand the sentiment, I think you are overlooking two major problems Sarang.

1) The average gamer values IP and good graphics over good gameplay
2) Good games do not always equal financial success

For the first point, look at the top 10 selling games every year. There is always CoD, some EA sports game, and alot of games with some popular IP. Hogwarts Legacy was the best selling game of 2023 despite it being a very medicore open world game just because its the "best" Harry Potter game that has come out. Despite CoD and EA sport games getting worse over the years with complaints by their very fans, they are more than willing to open their wallets for the next release. Budgets seem to overinflate because of the cost of producing photo-realistic graphics and adding new features like ray-tracing which doesnt improve the game in terms of playability but in terms of looks. Unfortunately, the average gamer prefers a pretty but mediocre game over a fun but old looking game with some very rare exceptions.

For the second point, its ironic you bring up Okami because that is a game that was a critical success but financial flop. Okami was an amazing and beautiful game that still arguably holds up to this day with an interesting combat design. The studio that produced it (Clover) also closed down soon after despite making amazing games (Beautiful Joe) because people didnt buy them. Making good games does not equate to financial success.

To be fair then you need a marketing team like EA's to con them into trying the game out. Sega had that offer to use EA's marketing team and while I love Sega that was one of the DUMBEST decisions they ever made to decline it. Sega's best Dreamcast ad was Japan only and did what it needed to do and got you curious for Rez. It is brilliant, low budget and quite fun.
To be fair on Ookami's end though it has been re-released twice already. Many Nippon Ichi games like Rhapsody and its prequel are getting re-released on Switch now. Even some of the COD fans are demanding some of the old games, that is why a number have gotten re-releases.
The problem is some of these games are being played after the fact hence my EA marketing team comment earlier.