FishyJoe on 22 December 2008
| Lingyis said: LBP was in development for... what, 4 years? so a reasonable estimate of development cost has is $40 million. (100 man-year * 4 * 100,000.) so assuming $40 revenue before dev cost (probably a high estimate, since they probably sell to retailers for $45, another $5 for misc costs) for sony for each LBP sold, 1 million needs to be sold to be profitable. at its current sales, LBP should turn a profit, disregarding the ROI for the moment. we'll also disregard downloadable content sales for now, which is likely not to be siginificant in any case. profitable is different from being successful, unless you want to look at things in a vacuum. video game industry is heavily dependent on home-runs (this aspect is much like the pharmaceutical industry), which subsidizes much of the dev cost for the lesser games. so question #1: is LBP considered a home-run game by sony? certainly. question #2: given that, is LBP going to provide enough subsidy? this is something a very deep analysis is necessary, and possibly something only sony knows. maybe not even they do, since there are so many ways to measure revenue and expenses and what-nots. for LBP to be a success, it needs to do more than just provide sufficient subsidy. it needs to be profitable after accounting for subsidies and return on investment. looking in a vacuum, for LBP to have a respetable ROI, i'd say about 1.75 million copies need to be sold. to satisfy the subsidizing aspect and ROI for the subsidized investment, i'd put another 1 million copies need be sold. overall, i'll say that when LBP reaches over 2.75 million copies sold you can start calling it a success. |
I think it goes beyond just the devleopment costs. There is a significant amount of network resources and ongoing maintenance and support/moderation required for this game. I know there is paid content, but whether it's enough to cover all the ongoing costs remains to be seen.
