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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Whats the most PROFITABLE Game Ever?

Profitable? Probably Tetris.

It cost the developers only $3.87 to make that game.



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I guess it's WoW, it has seriously huge amount of subscribers each month. I remember seeing an article about wow in which was stated that it makes over 1.30 billion dollars a year.



MontanaHatchet said:
To anyone saying Wii Sports, I really hope you're kidding.


One might make the argument that the "$50" in the 250$ price tag could be counted as revenue for Wii Sports base on the Japanese Wii price.  Or something like that.



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MontanaHatchet said:
Shanobi said:

It couldn't be any of the Rockbands, or Guitar Hero's. This is about profitability. While those do extremely well, they have to pay liscensing for each of those songs, and I'm sure that that is a hefty fee.

WoW has so many employees in the world playing to help, people on phone lines for issues, tons of servers, and I'm sure way more than I can even think of. Surely it makes a huge profit, but not record holding.

I'd go with something like Wii Sports, or Tetris. These are games that have sold insane numbers, and cost practically dirt to make.

Both bundled games?

 

And sold seperately. Tetris didn't start on the Gameboy, afterall. It's had countless console and PC versions, all of which were probably made on a shoe string budget.

 

But even so, I fail to see what being bundled would have to do with anything, so long as the price is factored into the package.

 

Wii sports 50 dollars is clearly included in the price of the Wii, or we'd have a 199.99 system like they do in Japan. So that's 50 dollars a pop, and like Tetris, I have to think that game was made by relatively few people, for incredibly cheap.

I'd imagine a game like Wii sports has made money in circles around World of Warcraft, which again has expenses to maintain and such.

But the most profitable I am sure would be Tetris.

Oh, and I'm curious where Starcraft falls into place, seeing as to there are some nations whose entire economy seems to revolve around that game. (Though that's probably all tournament based, and god knows if Blizzard sees a dime of it.)

 



 

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Shanobi said:
MontanaHatchet said:
Shanobi said:

It couldn't be any of the Rockbands, or Guitar Hero's. This is about profitability. While those do extremely well, they have to pay liscensing for each of those songs, and I'm sure that that is a hefty fee.

WoW has so many employees in the world playing to help, people on phone lines for issues, tons of servers, and I'm sure way more than I can even think of. Surely it makes a huge profit, but not record holding.

I'd go with something like Wii Sports, or Tetris. These are games that have sold insane numbers, and cost practically dirt to make.

Both bundled games?

 

And sold seperately. Tetris didn't start on the Gameboy, afterall. It's had countless console and PC versions, all of which were probably made on a shoe string budget.

 

But even so, I fail to see what being bundled would have to do with anything, so long as the price is factored into the package.

 

Wii sports 50 dollars is clearly included in the price of the Wii, or we'd have a 199.99 system like they do in Japan. So that's 50 dollars a pop, and like Tetris, I have to think that game was made by relatively few people, for incredibly cheap.

I'd imagine a game like Wii sports has made money in circles around World of Warcraft, which again has expenses to maintain and such.

But the most profitable I am sure would be Tetris.

Oh, and I'm curious where Starcraft falls into place, seeing as to there are some nations whose entire economy seems to revolve around that game. (Though that's probably all tournament based, and god knows if Blizzard sees a dime of it.)

 

The original GB games went at ~ 30 dollars a game, didn't they? As such, selling 30M would only lead to around 900 million in revenue. Unless you think WoW has 3 billion + in expenses (which is just a ridiculous thought) it doesn't stand a chance. It should also be far lower than the Sims (EDIT: Nevermind, I made an error when estimating the Sims' profitability). 

And Tetris actually far lower than that. A bunle with the machine + game costs less than just buying the machine and game separetly. So the revenue is actually more ala 15-20 dollars a game, and considering the shipments costs, it's unlikely that they earned more than 10$ a game.

 

As for Wii Sports, a Wii costs 25,000 yen on Amazon now. That's without Wii Sports. The cost of a Wii in Japan is equally high  as the cost in Americas, and it doesn't have Wii Sports.

 

Both of those are far, far away from the top 3, or probably even top 5.

Starcraft sold just 10-12 million copies, which puts it far, far away from the top.



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World of Warcraft no doubt





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Why are people ruling out bundled games? Why can't they be profitable? What if it cost Nintendo $1m to make Wii Sports and Wii sells for $250 in the US and costs $150 to make. Won't some of that $100 of profit be allocated to Wii Sports? After all there are many who use their Wii as a Wii Sports player. I know it is difficult, in fact totally impossible to actually measure its profits but to say it can't be profitable because it is bundled seems totally off to me.



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I would say Pokemon Red/Blue. 31 MILLION non-bundled sales. Assuming a $10 return on each game, that's $310 million. It's a Gameboy game. How much could it possibly have cost to make, 2 million at the most? Maybe not the most on $$$ amount, but in percent...15500% of the dev budget. Wow.



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If we're counting bundled games then I'm going for Windows solitaire.

But er, in terms of overall return WoW, and if you look at a ratio of costs to profit probably bejewlled.



Paperdiego said:
mrstickball said:
Not in order:

World of Warcraft
Wii Fit
Rock Band
Mob Wars
Sins of a Solar Empire

Are some really big ones. It's hard to quantify: Are we talking net revenue, or in terms of investment, too? SOASE cost $1m to make and sold 500,000 copies directly from Stardock, so every dime went to the developer....That's mighty impressive. Mob Wars makes $22k/day as of last year, and has only grown...It's a flash based game.

why would rockand be in there?

i mean niether guitar hero or rockband come close but if you were to choose one its would have to be guitar hero game, its a much bigger franshise 

We're talking about most profitable game and not franchises. Rock Band 1 sold over 5 million units, and many of which were between $150 and $200 USD. That's well above most Guitar Hero titles. On top of that (and yes, I know GHIII did better, but I doubt the budgets were as high for RB1) you have the ultra-profitable DLC marketplace for the PS3/360 versions which have sold millions of songs at $2.00 each. If I remember right, Rock Band hit $1 billion in revenue in a matter of a year which eclipsed both WoW and Guitar Hero for the pace of hitting the $1b revenue mark.



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