My understanding is that Japan still more or less remains in the recession economy it's been stuck in since the 80s bubble burst. So I'm not necessarily the most directly in-touch with how some things have been since I left. I work for Japanese publishers as a translator, but from my home here in the States, at least for the time being. I'll preface all of this by saying first that I haven't lived in Japan for a few years. The standard to compare MGSV's budget isn't western games here, but other Japanese games you're otherwise dealing in apples and Forgive my ignorance, but what is the general mood surrounding the economy in Japan currently? Inflation? Stagnation? I know Japan has pulled out of a few automotive deals in Russia due to instabilities here (and probably won't be back for another 2 years until things calm down), but part of me wonders due to the stereotypical risk-averse nature of Japanese business is whether that's them downsizing things on the international front in order to shore up things domestically rather than fear of volatile foreign markets. Couple this with differences in salaries between Japanese and Western developers and you have a budget that, sure, isn't unprecedented in modern games in general, but is rare among Japanese companies given the current economic environment. (This money doesn't account that their non-game sectors make, mind.) That they would divert that much towards the game when it still wasn't complete at the time of that figure is a surprise knowing that the margins for financial error for Japanese publishers tends to be pretty slim, let alone for a company with few successful IP to exploit at this stage like Konami. I didn't mention it in the tweets, but the article mentions that their game revenue has dropped 40% in the last ten years, buoyed mainly by what success they have had in mobile.
The surprise comes from my personally understanding of Japanese game budgets very few companies can even think about committing that much money for a console game and frankly, even with its occasional mobile success, Konami honestly tends to sit on the edge between being able to comfortably do that, even with IPs like MGS. It's definitely viable given the development length. I think most of what I wrote speaks for itself, but regarding the budget thing specifically: my surprise isn't over some notion that MGSV couldn't have possibly cost that.
Oh hey, my tweets got mentioned on my Internet home, awesome! Thanks!