rudyrsr8 said:
2) That depends on cost of making game and the deal the developer and publisher make and the marketing costs its individual per game agreement. 3)It has been reported that the Wii sithe only one that makes a profit the 360 might a small profit but not much |
2) Very often, if not always, the publisher has bought the rights to the software. This means that the publisher either has the game idea or gets the game idea from a developer. Then the publisher contracts the making of the game to a developer (which does not need to be the same developer that originally had the idea). The developer gets the money to make the game and is out of the foodchain forever (unless the rights fall back to them after n years). So the food chain looks rather simple after you lay down your $:
-store gets % of $ (5-35%)
-hw manufacturer gets % of $ (With console games only 0-20%)
-publisher gets rest of $
The percentages vary considerably and are unpredictable. There may be marketing contracts between any of the parties involved or special bundling deals or whatever makes the parties involved happier..
3) Production costs vary over time and are set by the companies because these costs contain a lot of positions that vary as time goes on. You are probably thinking of manufacturing costs and are wondering if the companies would make a profit by selling the consoles only. At this time, only the Wii is certainly profitable on the hardware level. All other consoles are more or less unprofitable (at this time) on the manufacturing level (and yes that includes the PS2 and the PSP). The XBox360 arcade model is probably the most unprofitable console as far as manufacturing goes.
