| grimygunz said: This thread makes no sense as we don't know how much each game cost to make. just because a game has a high amount of graphics don't mean the price to make it wont turn out a profit. If we can set a bar on making a profit then that would make sense. lets say 200,000 * $60 copies of a game needs to be sold to match development costs on a average ps3 and 360 game. 150,000 * $50 for a full fledged Wii game (not old ports new games like say boogie or no more heroes). 100,000 *40 for DS and PSP games. I'm no industry analyst but having a calculator helps your logic. |
I forget exactly who said it, maybe Namco? But some high end developer said that a 360/PS3 game needed around 600k sales to break even. I'm assuming that's WW and its for close to high budget games.
Assuming $40 profit per game, that's around $24 mil in profit which sounds about right. We've heard quite a bit of quotes of 20-30 mil budgets for the big names now.
As for the cost of a worker, for most decently large companies with benefits and for a technical profession where there is demand, the wages only make up a small portion of the costs. After factoring in work space and benefits and support, a 50k salaried worker can cost a company around 150-200k a year. So it can add up really quickly.
Keep in mind that the number of people they list as working on the game is not fully represented by company employees. It could be that of the 50 people working on a profit, 15 of them may have only worked on it for the equivalent of 2-3 months each for the artwork or the soundtrack portion. Another 10 or so may have been freelance or outsourced people. This is often overlooked because rarely do companies say it but a large portion of game development is now outsourced to specialized companies and its fairly cheap since they don't gotta pay all the benefits.
