| NJ5 said: @mrstickball: As I recall it, a whole studio at Sony was working on this game for 1.5-3 years, so this likely has about the same cost as an average PS3 game.
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1) That was my thought - that, from a financial standpoint, Home most likely cost Sony anywhere from $10-20m up front (before it launched in public) + maintenance and live development which will increase costs. So, as you say, $1m is not a lot of return on their investment (yet) given the costs - That's like if Little Big Planet debuted with 200,000 units sold in it's first month. Of course, Home will have a long-tail return, but it's unlikely that Sony will reap fiscal benefits from the platform for a year or two.
2) The other questionable issue I see, working with a developer that has a similar monetization strategy (InstantAction) is that only 30-35% of PS3 PSN users have downloaded home. From now on, it's unlikely that we're going to see that ratio go up at all. Because of this, that $1m in a month is NOT going to remain at that sort of height for a constant amount of time - Rather, it will drop (as already subscribed users have what they want, for the most part, and buy content less frequency).
The issue with that scenario is that Home will require new users to adopt to the system in order to maintain strong returns in monetization from Home. Problem is, though, that if the PS3 isn't selling, it hurts overall revenue for the structure.
Put it this way: if first month sales are $1m for IGC (in game content), I'd bet we're going to see it drop to $500,000 and slowly increase over the year - Home may make $15m by the end of 09 unless new content is monetized. $15m isn't going to be much if they continue live development, as it may not make their initial investment back.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
