As the video game industry has grown and technology has advanced, more and more effort goes into every video game made. Video games now can take over a decade to produce, and according to a recent CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) report, it seems as though games can cost over a billion dollars to create as well.

In an IGN article reporting on the issue, AAA games in 2024 and 2025 can have development budgets of over $200 million. Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto are examples of games where they surpassed $300 million and $250 million respectively. In addition to the marketing costs, which can add hundreds of millions of dollars, one large studio has reported that with the combination of development costs and marketing of one of their major franchises, the total would be over $1.1 billion. This is a major difference from numbers released just five years ago, where budgets of most AAA games were between $50 and $150 million.

With the time and effort it takes to create many AAA games, it is fair to say there is quite a bit of pressure on the creators to refine what they can for games so they can make a profit off of these steep costs. This could be an explanation for the recent changes many AAA games have made to make their games $70, which was increased from the usual $60. In order to make their money back on the labor, cost and time put into the game, companies need to compensate for that by providing alternative things to buy, such as battle passes and in game services, which can help the company make money off of games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

As games become progressively more expensive, it will be interesting to see how the gaming industry progresses, seeing as the trend is showing that games are taking longer to make and are costing more money.