Max King of the Wild said:
do the math. 27 dollars goes to the development team. 8.6 million / 27 = 320k. to break even now the dude probablly rounded. you are overexaggerating, He probablly wanted 500k copies to bring them the profit they wanted (which would almost be twice as much as cost of the game) no company just wants 1 dollar profit. |
First off, I'd honestly like to know where you get that 27 dollars figure. I mean, I am really interested in knowing what exactly is the profit margin structure of a Wii/PS3/X360 game, so if you have any in depth knowledge, please share it.
Second, it might have been the case before that most games made a profit, but I have some doubts that's the case regarding the HD development. The financial reports of studios and publishers seem to indicate that most HD games are anything but goldmines, which leads me to believe that your assumption is incorrect. Kasz already showed you the quotes where the president of Namco stated they need to sell at least 500 000 copies to make a profit. He also stated that creating the graphics for a PS3 game costs about 1 billion Yen, around 11 million dollars with current rates. If that's the case, then the total cost of a game must be much higher than the 10 million that you assume is more than what most games cost. Since Mr. Takasu is only talking about graphics, there shouldn't be too much of a difference between the PS3 and X360. So, again, the alleged cost of Gears development is not something to compare other games to.
