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

[HappySqurriel]

Godot said:

el_rika said:

MGS4 took 4 years and was around 60 mil without publicity costs, was it not ? Quite possibly the most expensive [purely development costs] game so far.

To break even, around 1 mil copies, maybe a bit more.

 

@Godot - how is SE inneficient compared to EPIC ?

Corridor shooters with simplistic story and very few cinematics and dialogue are infinitelly less complex and cheaper to produce that RPGs with hours of cinematics and dialogue and huge maps with lots of stuff and interaction. Of course a FF like game would cost much more than a Gears like game.

 

Gears of War isn't a corridor shooter. You know creating a virtual world takes a lot of time no matter if it's a shooter or a RPG. If I say Epic is more efficient it's because they most likely will have released 3 Gears of War in the time Square Enix only released Final Fantasy XIII and FFVXIII. Square Enix is taking forever to make its games. If you don't want me to compare Epic to Square Enix. Let's compare Konami and Square Enix. Metal Gear Solid 4 was released this June as a PS3 exclusive. It only took 1 year and a half after the release of the PS3 for them to release the game while Square Enix are relasing the game God only knows when.

 

If I remember correctly, Epic outsourced a large portion of the production of Gears of War to China where it costs 10% to 20% as much to employ someone as it does in the western world. This is not a bad stategy, but it can only survive so long ... Eventually their economy will be strong enough that developers can demand higher wages, and (much like what happened with companies in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s) eventually the companies that operate in a country like China will realize that they don't really need their western counterparts to make games and will produce their own games for profit.