How much should a video game cost to make? It’s a question that fans and developers alike grapple with, especially as the gaming industry continues pursuing expensive video games that end up hurting or closing studios.
It’s also a quandary that’s mired in mystery. Budgets for AAA games typically aren’t announced, and if they ever become known, it’s usually because there’s a legal proceeding that necessitates disclosure. Sometimes, specific figures get leaked. Such appears to be the case for Pokémon developer Game Freak, who recently suffered a massive information breach that divulged the Japanese studio’s future plans. The leak also offers an inside look at how Game Freak operates, including surprising nuggets of information like the apparent budgets of major Pokémon games.
According to leakers disseminating the bulk of related information, the following is how much recent Pokémon games have cost to make (in yen, with rough U.S. dollar equivalents for reference, based on current conversion rates):
Pokémon Sword and Shield: 2.498 billion yen ($16.4 million)
Pokémon Legends: Arceus: 2.175 billion yen ($14.4 million)
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet: 3.298 billion yen ($21.8 million)
To put these numbers into perspective, between 2015 and 2020, three of Treyarch’s Call of Duty: Black Ops games cost between $450-700 million to make; the figures are likely higher five years later. Sony exclusives like Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yōtei reportedly cost around $60 million to produce, which is low compared to games like Horizon Forbidden West. Many major gaming publishers say they spend hundreds of millions to craft the experiences we play, and the marketing budgets alone for these games are exponentially bigger than what a single Pokémon game apparently costs to make. Hence why AAA video games are getting more expensive for consumers, and why there’s continual chatter of a potential $100 price point. Games with a high level of graphical fidelity and polish require a ghastly amount of money.
To be perfectly clear: We don’t know if the information surfacing from the Pokémon leak is real. While Nintendo or Game Freak have not publicly confirmed anything from the leak, social media accounts sharing media from the Pokémon leak have recently been hit with DMCA takedowns. Nintendo also filed a subpoena earlier this year in an attempt to catch whoever was behind the first major breach at Game Freak, known as the “teraleak.” The sheer amount of supporting documentation, from proposal documents to concept art, also seems difficult to fake. Much of the information is highly specific in a way that would not interest the average fan, like demonstrations of physics simulations or the inclusion of spreadsheets.
The numbers also broadly align with what we know about how Nintendo approaches game development. In a recent investor Q&A, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto acknowledged that game development costs are rising everywhere. However, Miyamoto said, “We believe that not all products require large costs.”
“Even in the case of video games, with the current technology it is possible to create fun games with a small number of developers in a short period of time. We believe it is important not to lose sight of this perspective.”
The famed game developer added that Nintendo’s philosophy on game development is that the amount it spends is not as important as creating a quality product, and that ensuring polish also increases the value of a product.
“Bigger budgets do not necessarily equate to better ideas,” Miyamoto said.
This approach doesn’t mean Nintendo skimps out on costs across the board. In 2021, the Japanese game-maker revealed that it spent $880 million on research and development costs for its software and hardware. This also doesn’t elucidate the raw costs behind major Nintendo franchises, but we can make some educated estimates. In 2021, for instance, Miyamoto said that Nintendo needed to sell about 2 million copies of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to recover the cost of production. A game like Remedy’s Control cost $52.9 million to make and required around three to four million copies for the developer to break even. There’s some debate over these figures and whether they factor in things like marketing costs. But it seems safe to say that Nintendo’s development budgets might generally be a little closer to a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 than they are to, say, Halo Infinite or Marvel’s Spider-Man.
Game Freak is technically an independent studio with a few hundred full-time employees that has close ties to Nintendo. If the leaked numbers are true, then it appears that both Game Freak and Nintendo have a similarly fiscally conservative approach to game development. This will hardly be a surprise to longtime fans, of course. If anything, the idea that Pokémon games are “cheap” to make validates an ongoing frustration with the series.
For years now, fans have complained about the Pokémon franchise’s graphics. Partially, it’s frustrating that the series seems to lag behind its contemporaries. You will never play a Pokémon game and be amazed at its visuals, no matter how cute the monsters are or how well they are animated. There is a sense that the Pokémon series suffers from an ongoing arrested development that prevents the games from feeling modern. Stories in the mainline games tend to be childish. Mainline games will incorporate trendy ideas years after the peak of their popularity.
The ostensible problem with Pokémon is that it is an intellectual property with a cultural heft comparable to Disney, not a plucky upstart, even if Game Freak continues to operate like one. If, indeed, mainline Pokémon games “only” cost a couple of millions to make, then it follows that the franchise is extremely profitable. And if that’s the case, it makes the controversies surrounding Pokémon’s performance somewhat baffling.
Infamously, Scarlet and Violet were marred with issues that could, at times, make the game look like stop-motion animation. Sword and Shield will never be able to live down its ugly trees. Popular fan conspiracy theories postulate that Game Freak reuses assets between games while making excuses for why it cannot include the full compendium of monsters. Whether or not you agree with that sentiment, there’s no denying that modern Pokémon games don’t look terribly different from one another.
These are resentments that far precede recent budget leaks, but the information is now validating many of those frustrations, based on what fans are saying on social media. Nearly everyone is a little shocked, even if they could have guessed Pokémon games were not particularly costly to make.
“This makes it very easy to see why the games look like shit despite running on good hardware,” one Redditor opined.
“With the amount of money the franchise makes, these budgets are so low,” another said. “That’s insane.”
“They’re laughing all the way to the bank,” one fan wrote.
Pragmatists might wonder why Game Freak needs to make flashier games that cost more when its current approach is already tremendously successful. Optimists who believe the spirit of a game can prevail over technical details might be tempted to repeat the meme, “i want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i’m not kidding.” While some fans are receiving budget numbers with a slacked jaw, others maintain that this state of affairs is a good thing.
“The constantly-increasing bloat of modern game dev culture has lead to very little good,” one commenter favorably offered in a discussion about Pokémon’s budget. “It incentivizes against risks and new ideas, it bloats games, extends development cycles for years and years … and causes otherwise decent games to fail financially because there was simply too much money spent on them.”
The Switch 2 does theoretically open up more opportunities for Game Freak, which won’t need to make future games cross-platform. But the studio shows no signs of abandoning its tried and true approach. Pokémon Legends: Z-A isn’t out yet as of this writing, but fans already believe that the game underwent a graphical downgrade midway through development. A variety of textures have been flattened and made muddier, and the city itself appears to be made up of largely similar buildings. Z-A wasn’t a particularly visually impressive game to begin with.
It’s facts like these that deflate fans and make them wonder why the massive ROI isn’t being invested in producing a higher quality product. Fans aren’t expecting Rockstar Games levels of polish. Good art direction can trump realistic graphics. By many accounts, Z-A is reportedly a fun game. It would be nice if major Pokémon games didn’t come out the gate with technical issues incongruent with the complexity of the games, though. Failing that, fans would probably appreciate not having to settle for a lesser version of whatever was advertised. Until mainline Pokémon games operate smoothly at a baseline level without requiring a graphical downgrade, fans will feel like their love of the franchise is being taken advantage of.
But for all the complaints, both Nintendo and Game Freak seem to be a part of the exalted few within the industry that are not staring down a spiritual development crisis that threatens their future. Maybe that solidity is worth more than making sure Pikachu has an impressive number of s.
