Harmony’s supposed $400m price range / price of improvement have been the discuss of the city all weekend, however the declare is being hotly debated by online game builders and journalists alike. The determine got here from Sacred Symbols’ Colin Moriarty, who claims to have heard it from a supply inside Sony. However different Sony devs have solid doubt over it.
Harmony’s reported $400m surpasses Purple Useless Redemption 2, Spider-Man 2 price range
Listening to Moriarty’s clip, he claims that Harmony was in a messy state after ProbablyMonsters spent $200m on it, then Sony jumped in and spent one other $200m to save lots of the mission. He means that this determine doesn’t embody the price of buying Firewalk Studios.
It’s doable that wires had been crossed someplace and the determine Moriarty was given isn’t the precise price of creating Harmony. For starters, this implies the sport price greater than the likes of Purple Useless Redemption 2 and Spider-Man 2, which is preposterous. Secondly, we’ve solely seen proof of one sport — Star Citizen — costing various hundred million to make. Harmony being up there sounds fairly ridiculous.
As identified by GamesIndustry’s Chris Dring, Harmony — a $40 sport — didn’t even get an honest advertising price range. And as identified by former Sony worker Del Walker, Firewalk was established solely six years in the past with “lower than a dozen” builders. The deceptive declare that Harmony was in improvement for eight years was debunked shortly after it originated as a result of it turned out that the sport was simply an thought eight years in the past.
Then, there are claims that Harmony’s improvement was closely outsourced, which is what contributed to its price of improvement. This has additionally been shot down as a result of high-profile video games, together with Sony’s personal, have greater than twice the quantity of outsourcing credit than Harmony.
Lastly, Kotaku’s Ethan Gach says that he heard a special quantity for Harmony’s price range than Moriarty.
For some motive, the gaming group is engaged in a confrontation over this report. One aspect is declaring the absurdity of the $400m price range declare, whereas the opposite thinks all journalists and devs disputing Moriarty’s report have some type of an “agenda.”
Make of this what you’ll.