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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Myth busting; 3rd party games are unprofitable on Wii U

mibuokami on 29 December 2013

So if all it takes is 100,000 copies selling for a Wii U port to be 'profitable' why does so many developer publisher shun the console like the plague?

I mean if I put $2 million dollars in the bank for 2-3 years, that would also be profitable but I don't think that's the kinda of 'profit' most developers publisher are looking for.

Edit - publisher not developers obviously.




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episteme on 29 December 2013
mibuokami said:
So if all it takes is 100,000 copies selling for a Wii U port to be 'profitable' why does so many developer shun the console like the plague?

I mean if I put $2 million dollars in the bank for 2-3 years, that would also be profitable but I don't think that's the kinda of 'profit' most developers are looking for.

EA left them when all their ports were far from 100.000.

Let's see what Ubisoft, Activision and Warner are going to do next year.



mibuokami on 29 December 2013
episteme said:
mibuokami said:
So if all it takes is 100,000 copies selling for a Wii U port to be 'profitable' why does so many developer shun the console like the plague?

I mean if I put $2 million dollars in the bank for 2-3 years, that would also be profitable but I don't think that's the kinda of 'profit' most developers are looking for.

EA left them when all their ports were far from 100.000.

Let's see what Ubisoft, Activision and Warner are going to do next year.

EA is kinda of a special case, they have never been on the best of terms with Nintendo. I would be really scared if Ubisoft did the same however. That would really be a body blow given Ubi are open to porting there stuff to just about anything that looks like it might have a pulse.




ICStats on 29 December 2013
eyeofcore said:
Conina said:
eyeofcore said:

I didn't call revenue a profit, I just labelled it as "profit" not profit. By meaning "profit" I meant revenue that could contain profit, the product that gathered enough revenue to recoup the costs and be profitable

Yeah, that's the way of busting the myth of unprofitable 3rd party games... relabeling precise terms with other precise terms, which have a totally different meaning and embed them in quotation marks.

It seems you forgot when some people put quotation mark for some  that it does not mean that the word in that quoation mark has the same meaning as the one without it. Resident Evil 6 is a "survival horror" game, but in reality it is more of an action adventure game than a survival horror game... Portal 2 is "first person shooter" while it is more correctly said that it is a first person puzzle solving game.

eyeofcore said:

Anyway, revenue always in the end becomes profit...

No. Njet. Nada. Nein. Non.

You are right then again you are wrong, same thing for me... I called it "profit" because they have profit from a single copy otherwise making and selling those copies would be unprofitable. Profit from those copies covers the cost of the game and once enough of them are sold to cover all the costs of the game then it is for real a profit.




Eyeofcore did put "profit" in his opening post, so it is clear he didn't mean final profit - at that point in the post.

But Eyeofcore, your post is based on the idea that ports cost less to make therefore they could be profitable even selling 100k units, while new developments may take 500k units to be profitable.  That to me means you're talking about real profitability.  So why are you saying real profitability is off topic?



My 8th gen collection

Aielyn on 29 December 2013
JWeinCom said:
What I do know is that you're not including opportunity cost in this decision. Suppose Activision made 2 million on Ghosts for Wii U. That's nice, but what else could they have been doing with that team at the time? Could the team have been working on another project that would have netted 5 million? You have to take that into account too.

That argument is one for whether it's the most profitable choice. The thread is busting the myth that the games aren't profitable. They clearly are.

Furthermore, you're also ignoring the non-monetary return on investment. Releasing Ghosts for Wii U helps to build brand awareness on the console, which means that ongoing investment in the series will gain further benefits from it. Developing Ghosts for Wii U reduces future costs of porting games to Wii U, thereby increasing future returns. There is more beyond this, but these are the two most important non-monetary returns.