Naughty Dog Co-Founder Affirms Sony Acquisition as the “Right Decision”

Naughty Dog co-founder Andrew Gavin recently chimed in on a question that’s often posed about the studio: why did they decide to sell to Sony? The answer, unsurprisingly, hinges heavily on finances and the escalating costs of game development during those years.

In a LinkedIn post highlighted by Tech4Gamers, Gavin reflected on how the budgets for game development exploded. Back in the ’80s, creating a game might set you back around $50,000. However, by the time they were working on iconic titles like Jak and Daxter, those costs had surged to about $15 million. Financial stability, he notes, was an obvious motivator for the decision to sell.

While Naughty Dog could handle financing in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands, breaking into the millions was a different story in the early 2000s. It was a financial risk that was simply too great for the studio to manage on its own.

The exact amount Sony paid to bring Naughty Dog under its umbrella has never been confirmed, but estimates suggest the figure could have been anywhere between $50 and $200 million in 2001. Since then, Naughty Dog has become one of Sony’s cornerstone developers. While continuing their work on The Last of Us series, they’re also gearing up to introduce Intergalactic, their first new intellectual property since 2013.