Retailers don't get a refund of any kind unless product is sent back.  If the store sells it, even at a discount, they still paid full price for it.  They don't cut the price and then demand a refund from the distributor.

And even then you need to have a consignment agreement first which not all retailers (especially in the US) have.  Basically this means that units are shipped to retailers but the retailer only pays the distributor when a copy is sold rather than paying in full for product up front.  Then unsold units get returned.  There is also 4 or 5 different consignment sales models but this is really only common in some parts of Europe.

Let me get this straight.  A retailer will puchase X amount of copies at full price but if a certain percentage of those copies do not sell, the distributor will send money to the retailer to offset the reduced retail price to sell the remainder?

that's what I said in the previous thread

Zombie U is not a 2d mario built and skaled up with the same old level editor that is used since so many years.

Considering that there is a new console,you need new tools,coders must get used to the system,have to experiment with the tablet,nintendo refused to give them full Wii U specs-that's no cheap thing.
coding next gen games is expensive and if you consider that SquareEnix was expecting to sell more than 5mio units to make games like tomb raider profitable you need for sure more than 1.5 mio sales to make zombie u profitable even if it was one of the shortest games and coded the most efficient way ever

Why do people think the costs of the game was that low (8-10 million)? I have no clue; I'm just curious. I mean it was Ubisoft's launch game for the Wii U was it not? That would mean they had to create a new engine and do a lot of extra work to make it.

Also, I don't know how the money flowed in the Ubisoft/Nintendo agreement but I was assuming Ubisoft paid development costs. Then they only get part of the revenue. There was a thread on that awhile ago but I don't remember numbers so I'll assume $20 for a $60 game. That would mean they got a max of $10 million if all games were the full $60 which was most likely not the case. So there's that plus whatever Nintendo paid them.

So I don't believe the game was profitable for them either. By how much? No clue, as everything everyone is going by is pure speculation.

That's the consignment agreement I was talking about before.  That's rarely used except in some European markets in desperation mode.   HMV did it for a little while when they were in administration.  But this is not used as standard practice.  Much less widescale.

And I've also never heard of a distributor paying money back to a retailer for a percentage of product that was reduced in price by the retailer themselves.

Well considering Wii U sales were negative for Ubisoft last quarter, it seems unlikely that retailers were paying Ubisoft at the point of sale.  Whether Ubisoft was subsidizing discounts or copies were returned is up for debate though.

It most likely is though.  I can only really speak about Square Enix games since I looked into their financial statements, but the reason Hitman, Tomb Raider, and Deus Ex wasn't profitable was because of that retailer insurance.  I don't see why other publishers don't make those deals with retailers, it lets them stuff channels.  I actually see games hit the bargain bin way faster now than they did back in the PSX/N64 days.  Back then a game stayed full pirce until it became a greatest hit and if it didn't, it just got discontinued.  From what I know Nintendo doesn't do that which is why their games stay full price until they cut the price themselves.

And what exactly they expected? the 3rd party support on Wii was absolutely horrible, no sane Nintendo fans can trust them anymore.

There is no goodwill for 3rd party publishers on Nintendo platforms, and it's their fault, it was not created overnight.

yer right. if that is what they budgeted around then whoever did should be fired.