Call of Duty: World at War (Wii) has sold 1m copies.

[famousringo]

al222 said:

The thing is that profit margin does not really shows how well a paticular game performed. What gives us a better idea of the performance of a game is how many dollars earned for each dollar spent.

I have read in various places that a x360/ps3 game costs around 30 million dollars to produce, while a wii game costs around 5 million (correct me if i'm wrong)

So let's do the math:

x360:

5 million copies of waw sold -> 5 million x 60 dollars = 300 million dollars.

300 million - 30 million of costs = 270 million of profit

270 million of profits / 30 million of spendings = 9 dollars for each dollar spent.

 

wii:

1 million copies of waw sold -> 1 millions x 50 dollars = 50 million dollars.

50 million - 5 million of costs = 45 million of profits

45 million of profits / 5 million of costs = 9 dollars for each dollar spent!!

 

So that means, WaW on the wii was as lucrative as WaW was of the xbox 360, even if on the wii it has sold only 1 million copies. (I know my calculations are a little rough, but is should not be that far of real facts.)

 

 

There are quite a few problems with your math, although I agree that both versions probably look pretty damn good to Actiblizz in terms or return on investment. Here are some things to keep in mind in the future.

First, you're about 50%-100% too high on your average cost to develop an HD game. CoD: WaW may have cost $30 million, perhaps even more, but average HD costs are usually though to be about $20 million. Averages don't tell the whole story either, since you have outliers in the form of cheap shovelware and mega blockbusters. You have to try to keep the quality of the project in mind when you estimate the production cost.

Second, those development costs don't come anywhere close to representing the full cost of putting these games up on the market. You can add in advertising, the cost of printing and shipping copies, distribution and retail. Lots of different companies get a slice of that $60 from a retail sale. The breakdown is poorly understood and varies depending on a lot of factors, but the retailer gets a big chunk (30-50%), distributor gets a tiny piece (~5%), disc manufacturer gets another tiny piece, the console manufacturer gets a licensing fee. The publisher will be left with something less than 50% of the sticker price, which will first go to pay for marketing and development, then surplus will go to publisher profit and perhaps developer royalties if the game was successful enough.

So basically trying to calculate exactly how much any given game made is close to impossible without access to confidential cost information. It's all guesswork on our part.

And finally, welcome to the 'Chartz. If you stick around, I'm sure you'll learn a lot.