A court document from the Microsoft vs. FTC case has revealed more than it intended, with Horizon Forbidden West having a budget of $212 million.

There’s a been a lot of nonsense spoken at the ongoing court case between Microsoft and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), by just about everyone involved. Even more if you take into account the 16 months the whole Activision Blizzard furore has been going on for so far.

Some of the things Microsoft has been saying are frankly absurd, like the promise to get 150 million more people playing Call Of Duty, but the award for the dumbest mistake so far goes to Sony: who for the sake of a better pen have accidentally revealed the budgets of their two biggest games.

The figures were supposed to be redacted but the ink used wasn’t strong enough and you can still clearly see the numbers underneath, revealing Horizon Forbidden West had a budget of $212 million (£168m) and The Last Of Us Part 2 cost $220 million (£174m) to make.

The obvious takeaway from this is that a big budget Sony first party title costs around $200 million to make, with God Of War Ragnarök presumably coming in at roughly the same amount.

Sony also tried to redact how many people worked on the games, but that can be made out too, with The Last Of Us Part 2 requiring around 200 developers and Horizon Forbidden West having around 300 (the discrepancy is likely due, in part, to Naughty Dog being a more experienced studio).

The obvious problem is that $400 million for next gen games is completely unfeasible under the current way of doing things, which is exactly what former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden warned of back in 2021.

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