Month: June 2023

The Last of Us Part II Cost a Cool $200 Million to Develop

Sony’s confidential PlayStation secrets just spilled because of a Sharpie by Tom Warren and Sean Hollister for The Verge

It looks like someone redacted the documents with a black Sharpie — but when you scan them in, it’s easy to see some of the redactions. Oops.

I modified the image slightly, so I could read the text better.

Someone is in big trouble over in Sony’s legal department.

While the development time for The Last of Us Part II wasn’t a surprise, the cost to make it was. Now, $200 million also isn’t a surprise; massive AAA first-party exclusives fall in this range. Just look at Horizon Forbidden West in the previous sentence above.

For context though, The Last of Us Part II sold 4 million copies in three days. If all of those were just the base game at $59.99, Sony recouped the development cost and then some at $239,960,000. In 2022, the game reached 10 million copies sold, although the profit made is unknown due to discounted sales throughout that time. The entire series (four games) has sold 37 million copies.

I think the $200 million investment for Part II has paid off. I wager the investment in The Last of Us Part III will pay off even more so; not sure if the multiplayer game will see the light of day though.

Chapter Select: Season 5, Episode 11 – Resident Evil 4 Remake

Episode art generated by DALL-E 2 with the following prompt written by Max Roberts - "A small Spanish church behind a creepy cemetery with red, blue, and green stained glass at night under heavy rain lit by torches in a diorama style."
Illustration generated by DALL-E 2, prompted by Max Roberts

It is time to return to Spain with its one liners, mysterious merchants, and cryptic castles. Max Roberts and Logan Moore complete their journey through Resident Evil by donning their leather jackets one more time. Did the Resident Evil 4 remake surpass its origins or did it buckle under the weight of its predecessor?

Download (57MB) — Episode Transcript

RSS Feed – Overcast – Apple Podcasts – Spotify – YouTube

Resident Evil 4 (2023)

Metacritic – 93/100

This episode was originally recorded on May 17, 2023.

@ChapterSelect

Max’s Twitter @MaxRoberts143

Logan’s Twitter @MooreMan12

Researcher, Editor, and Producer – Max Roberts

Hosted by Logan Moore & Max Roberts

Illustration generated by DALL-E 2, prompted by Max Roberts.

Happy 10 Year Anniversary to The Last of Us

Ten years ago, my summer kicked off with a game that would change my life and countless others. Who knew a decade ago that I’d name my daughter after Ellie.

I don’t have anything big planned for today. I should, but have just run out of time. I just wanted to acknowledge this significant milestone. 

If you’d like to see, read, or listen to any of my coverage on The Last of Us or Naughty Dog, check out my hub for Chasing the Stick. The franchise is bigger than ever today with the TV show and inevitable Part III. The multiplayer game is in limbo, becoming the studio’s longest developed game to date.

The Last of Us has stood the test of time and will be around for many more years to come. Congratulations to Neil, Bruce, and the team at Naughty Dog. Endure and survive indeed.

Letting the Nerdy Inclination Go

I have had a realization during this whole move. It has hit me in pieces, over the course of various tasks, but the heart of it is “letting the nerdy inclination go.”

I was talking with my pal Casey about my ambitious property-wide networking solution (ironically, pre-move) and landed on that phrase when discussing speed limitations. The gist is I know I could get a certain speed, but letting go that I am not, in this case, for the sake of convenience.

Another instance would be my home office. I haven’t had my iMac for a month now. I was driving to work last week thinking about how I miss macOS.1 2 Near the front half of the move, this was driving me crazy. I am weeks behind on editing the Season 5 finale of Chapter Select. I have a proverbial mountain of posts (like this one) that I want to write. I have videos I want to make. But my home and detached office have been infested with fleas. The office needed some demo; it has to be painted to help get rid of the smoke smell; it needs a new mini-split for the same reason.

Given the new amount of space in the house versus the old apartment, we get to use both the LG C9 and C1 televisions. The C9 got bumped last year because of some dead pixels. Now that TV is our living room set, since we will just watch movies and shows on it (with some occasional gaming). The C1 will be in the office for all the fancy game tech. I know the dead pixels are there. I can see them when standing by the television. But when I am actually watching TV on my couch eight or so feet away, I can’t see them at all.

Are you getting it?

I have to let the nerdy inclination go. There are factors, circumstances, and things that exist that I cannot do anything about in a practical or realistic way. If I let the knowledge of a few dead OLED pixels or a few megabytes of internet or tiny fleas3 drive me batty, I will miss out on so much more. Letting the knowledge and the inclination I have go, accepting the reality of a given situation, frees me. To be frank, its saving my mind.

Let the nerdy inclination go. Do your best and the rest will all fall into place.

1. WWDC was upon us. Apple OS magic was in the air.

2. I truly hate working on Windows at my full time job. 

3. Okay, the fleas suck but have been/are being eradicated.