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

[Million]

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.

Your understanding of anything pertaining to this thread is pretty weak. Firstly FF XIII probably has far more depth than Gears 1 & 2 put together like others have said the amount of cinemtatics , diaglogue , maps , quests , intracies  involved ina game like FF dwarfs anything with the name "Gears on it"