Let's say marketing cost $7 million and Sony took say $10 million for licensing costs and the dev budget could very well have been over $25 million. That all adds up to $42 million. 

1.5 million and $25 per copy is only $37.5 million in revenue to cover all of that. Rufly $5 million short.

So it's not very strange the developer didn't break even. Happens to many million sellers.

It was poor management that cost them so much, the game was initially concieved as multiplat. Infact Heavenly sword would not have existed without Sonys help, Sony gave them the engine practically built the game for them, im guessing thats why they are so bitter about it.

It was well more than two years.  As has been mentioned before in this thread.  Ninja Theory sunk a decent amount of time and money into an Xbox version of the game before switching to next-gen consoles and landing a deal with Sony.

I actually do not find that strange at all.  Brutal Legend sold over a million copies but it was considered a sales disappointment by EA which is why Double Fine aren't workingon BL2 now.  I would assume it is the same case with Heavenly Sword.

people keep saying look at all the money they sank into the xbox and other versions ,what as that got to do with them not breaking even on the ps3 game ,when they said they did not break even on the development cost most people would expect that to mean the money spent on the ps3 game only ,  seems like they are including everything including all the pre sony private financing that had nothing to do with the cost of the ps3 version.

it reminds me of those shots of the producers ferrari sitting outside of a "struggling" development company HQ.

No, according to Famitsu 3DGH sold 13k total.  Not 13k before it dropped off the charts, but 13k for all of last year... it was a gigantic bomb, especially since it came post-slim and had a fair bit of promotion and advertising.  I have no idea where you're getting 28k?  Media Create gives it as 16k and even VGC says it's just 15k.

Valkyria bump came with budget pricing, which happened less than a year after it released, and over a year before Valkyria 2 did.  Sega said they moved Valkyria 2 to PSP because they wanted to reach a wider audience with the franchise (which was probably also the reason for dumbing down the art/setting/story).

edit: oh, just looked, VGC actually says 28k. :/  Well, Fami and MC have it at half that, and Fami covers 70% of the market directly...

Well I was thinking that on vgchartz it was logical to use vgchartz numbers...

What are you expecting from this game ? A 100 k sales only in Japan ? Come on this game could have been digital only.

VC 2 is a high profile psp title, it is pretty clear it has been in dev for some years. And we're talking about Sega, they can be really silly. After all, they said a third episode will come on PS3 if the second on PSP is a success, don't they ?

I think the bigger question is what did From expect?  Something tells me it wasn't under 20k, especially since it came after their breakout success with Demon's Souls and they likely signed an exclusivity contract.  Oh, and they threw a ton of cash into pushing the game.

And no, Shintaro Tanaka (the game's producer) said they like to do another console release some day, but that depended on Valkyria 2's sales.  Honestly, it basically backfired imo, since the game sold the same on PSP as it did on PS3, and no "wider audience" seemed interested... they might as well have made Valkyria 2 on PS3 from the start.