bardicverse on 12 August 2008
Some people had it pretty spot on. It's all relative to the actual development costs. If a game doesn't reach a financial breakeven, then the game is said to be in the red, or not profitable. Once it hits the breakeven, anything more puts that game in the black, or making a profit.
At the end of the day, a $50 game has a take-home for a publisher of about $30. So dependent on development costs, the breakeven varies.
So at $30/copy sold, a game with a $3 mil budget (average Wii game) would have to sell 100k copies to reach its breakeven, whereas a HD game might have a 15 mil budget, would have to sell 500k copies to reach its breakeven
