„We always want it to be 3% smaller than is the kind of minimum to do it.” Ghost of Yotei devs have a unique work philosophy, and the key issue is budget

Ghost of Yotei was quite expensive, but the creators managed not to go overboard with the budget, unlike other game sequels from Sony's catalog.

It's no secret that the cost of game production has significantly increased in the last few years. Full voiceover with dubbing and high-quality soundtracks, involving actors as models (including for motion capture sessions), advanced graphics, and complex gameplay systems - all of these factors contribute to longer development times and budgets that rival or even exceed those of the most expensive movies. (Let's not even talk about network infrastructure in the case of multiplayer games).

Expensive sequels...

Sony Interactive Entertainment hasn't missed out on this trend either. Even disregarding the costly failure of Concord, sequels to big hits on PlayStation usually cost much more than their predecessors. For example, Sony has allocated $212 million for Horizon: Forbidden West, which is almost five times more than for Zero Dawn - around $47 million. On the other hand, the budget for the first Marvel's Spider-Man was around 90 million dollars, maybe without marketing costs, but the sequel required the creators to spend about 315 million dollars.

If Sucker Punch studio had followed the "example" of those sequels, we would be talking about a budget of around 180-300 million dollars. However, the devs assure that with Ghost of Yotei, they managed to maintain almost the same amount, which is 60 million dollars, that the developers spent on Ghost of Tsushima.

The exact amount wasn't given, but even if we're talking about an extra 10 million dollars, it's still a much smaller budget compared to other Sony sequels.

Crew below minimum staff

How did Sucker Punch studio manage to do this? Brian Fleming, one of the founders of the company, emphasized the importance of keeping the team relatively small, to the extent that the main crew should operate at a level "3% smaller than is the kind of minimum to do it."

This strategy sounds risky, but the same can be said about hiring more developers. After the recent massive layoffs, many people said it was because publishers made too many investments and hired too many creators.

That's why quite a few studios declared that they are not interested in excessive growth, even if their games are very successful. Especially after this month, which brought players a big hit created by a really small team.

Ghost of Yotei will be released on October 2 on PS5.

Ghost of Yotei

October 2, 2025

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• gamedev behind-the-scenes
• action adventure games
• gaming budgets
• Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Ghost of Tsushima (franchise)