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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What is the average an indie game needs to sell to be profitable?

With how they cheap they look probably half a dozen copies.



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It depends, but I think 10~15k in most cases.



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More than the budget.



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I believe that the revenue cut the developers get in this case are roughly 60% or so, if my estimates are correct. So, I'd say it depends on the price and kind of effort placed into the game.

Really, I can't imagine something like Affordable Space Adventures breaking even at just 10k copies, for instance. Or FAST Racing Neo breaking even at 20k, given the experience of the developer and the scale of the project.



 
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Look at it this way: Yacht Club budgeted themselves at ~$600K for Shovel Knight (300 from kickstarter and 300 for the stretch goals themselves). Within a week they sold 75,000 copies, enough to give them almost $700K that they took home. That's assuming they take home 60% of the game's profit. So, for a relatively high budget indie like Shovel Knight, you needed about 50K lifetime. (Mind you, ideally they wanted about double their $600K budget so as to pay employees well enough, but that's neither here nor there.) So an average, one to four man indie game should ideally hit around 25-40K in sales (at $15 per sale before the 30-40% platform fees, adjust as you wish for different price points) if we want them to be paid properly. 

 



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As others have said, that would vary greatly based in how much was spent in developing the game and what they price it at. I don't think you can come up with any useful average if you lump all indie games together.



Meme Run's initial price was 5$, so I assume they started profiting after the tenth copy sold.



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Who says they're all making profit?



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spurgeonryan said:
vivster said:
Who says they're all making profit?


No one, but something must be drawing them to the Wii U in droves now.

You call it droves, I call it a very tiny fraction of the indie games that release on other platforms. It's not that more indies are going to Wii U, it's just that Nintendo is letting more through.



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I'm sure it varies greatly, but I imagine a lot of Wii U ports can be profitable with 1000 units sold.

Quite honestly though, many of those games on the eShop look like iOS and Android marketplace junk. Bigger budget indie games are generally skipping Wii U.



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