Rougly how many sales are needed to break even on a high budget game?

[SaviorX]

Zim said:
BengaBenga's estimates seem pretty much spot on. I can't remember who mentioned the 20million average dev cost I think maybe it was capcom. Forbes mentioned that they spent 20million advertising Lost planet and how it was equal to the cost of developing the game. So that is 40million for a good quality highly advertised game. (you can find the article on kotaku, gamingpr etc)

Midway stated stranglehold cost 30million to make. I suppose they had slightly higher costs due to licensing the film, getting chow yun fat etc. However at the same time it wasn't in development that long or advertised that much etc.

There were rumours KZ2 was costing $60million in development costs even when it was expected to have released fall 2008. So yea 70mill estimate is probably about right, maybe even higher if those estimates didn't include advertising budget. If you consider Stranglehold cost $30mill and LP $40mill then KZ2 is clearly going to be above those as it's been in development much longer by a bigger team.

 

 Sounds about right. Scary how much this stuff can run you isn't it?