007 First Light Budget Was Not $200 Million, Exec Says As Game Passes 3 Million Sales

The new James Bond game, 007 First Light, has passed 3 million sales, according to IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak, who also pushed back against the claim that the game cost $200 million to develop. He told IGN that it's true that First Light is "by far" the most expensive entertainment product to ever come out of IO's home country of Denmark. However, $200 million covers much more than the game's development budget, including returning some money to developers in the form of bonuses. “We give big fat bonuses to our teams if they do hit a few goals,” Abrak said. “There's some bonuses in there to be paid out in the future. There's marketing in there and whatnot. So it's not the actual cost of the product. But we'll come up with all that. It's by far the most expensive one, but it's not like for the game itself, not $200 million.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOceRj8nR5A In any event, Abrak said he feels "very confident" that First Light will make a profit, adding that the game is tracking "well above" internal forecasts. "By all measures it’s freaking successful,” Abrak said. Given the critical and commercial success of First Light, people are naturally wondering about the possibility of a sequel. IO's deal for First Light was made prior to Amazon buying MGM and the James Bond series, with IO handling both development and publishing for First Light. Amazon will publish a potential sequel, and an executive's comments led some to believe IO might not be involved . It remains to be seen what will happen, but Abrak said "there will be information about" what comes next between IO and Amazon soon. Should IO get to make a First Light sequel, Abrak said he expects costs to come down. He said 2016's Hitman cost $78 million to make, while its sequel cost $48 million and was made two years after. The third one, meanwhile, was developed in 20 months and cost $19 million. Abrak said some developers increase scope and ambition with sequels, but IO has a different plan in place. "Ambition is not necessarily that it's more expensive. Ambition is, the platform you build, how do you keep giving amazing experiences from that and how do you iterate on a sequel from that in a smart way, where it's retroactively maybe lifting the first one as well, like we did with World of Assassination? Some of this approach to concept and ambition, one could think could be applied to Bond as well," he said. In other news, First Light is set to expand further this year with a Switch 2 edition this summer and lots of new content .

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