Then tell me something, these full time employees at HAL, do they cease to be paid if when theyre not working on the game?, and if theyre not working on the game, or contributing towards it, what exactly are they being paid for?

Just because someone is hands-on on a project for a short time, if theyre on the payroll for a project, theyre paid regardless, that's just how it is.
Unless of course you want to try and convince people that HAL put more than 30% of their workforce on to Boxboy.

Mm,yeah, it'll take 15 years japanese studio experience over "i dont buy it".

Ok, tachikoma, you are an SCEJ developer, aparently you know a lot of development costs, can you tell me how much millions need to sell a game like the order 1886, in order to even pay the salary of developers team? because if kirby, a game in 2d cost 4.4 million i think the industry is going for a crash sooner than later.

I'm thinking of getting a PS4 eventually. :p

I did not know you are a developer. I understand you can not reveal any numbers BUT...

...if you take the above mentioned cost for  developing for PS3/X360 ($18.8m-$28.2m) adding inflation and marketing costs, as well as all your mentioned  costs - does this mean that an average AA/AAA game for this generation must sell approximately 1.5 million copies to break even? This is probably more than you can reveal? 

I really would like to know too, but as it is very difficult to get any numbers on games costs AND earnings (the movie industry display their numbers more openly) she most likely can not say much more than she already has.

Ask yourself this, why is the industry moving towards indy development, and development studios the world over are dropping like flies.

Eventually, there wont be many major studios left and we'll be living off of the few indies that make it big.

Yes it is really scary. For regular software development some of the work is outsourced to India and other low costs regions. Not that much for games though? Watchdogs Wii U was ported in Bulgaria I think.

Is it my turn to sigh?

They are working on different games. They might be involved for some months in one project and then for some more in other projects. These other projects also make money, you know. HAL has other projects and is part of Nintendo, where it isn't unheard of that workers get reassigned to finish up a project. So, how many of these 80 listed in the credits are even HAl-workers and hwo many are reassigned from other parts of Nintendo to finish up the project or to provide help in one special area? How many of the workers of HAL were assigned temporarily to other projects? How many were involved in Super Smash Bros, even as it was mainly developed by Namco?

So I have to take some quickly made up estimate with obvious flaws for given? Do you think I don't have a brain in my head? I don't say that I think the game is profitable, I have serious doubts about that. But I also doubt the quick calculation of Tachikoma really defines a lower possible bound. Fact is, we just know too less for it. Tachikoma just let it look like this quick calculation is untouchable, because she wants to make a point. The same is true for the OP, his assumptions are also flawed, as he wants to make a point. Do I have to take the biased position of one as a universal truth only because of the job? I'm a software developer since more than 15 years, I can take a look from the outside myself. Tachikoma does not have more inside knowledge about HAL and Nintendo than I have. I don't say the cost estimate she made is too big, it might be actually too low. But accepting it as absolute lower bound would mean ignoring the obvious assumptions in this estimate, that might or might not be true.