Sega talks about their actual state. Core games at risk

[NJ5]

WereKitten said:

@NJ5
I had supposed the 2009 number was a projected amount, it doesn't make sense to put it there otherwise.
And I can read the factual numbers. Revenues increased, expenses increased more. But they are not an argument by themselves, nor in particular _your_ argument.

Your argument is that the _cause_ of that net loss and generally of the diminishing profit is development on PS3 and 360 (and PC?). Or that their financial situation would be much different if they concentrated on the Wii.
Actually it would be useful if you stated your argument clearly.
I say that you have no support for this argument without more detailed data, because those total numbers are the sum of too many diverse contributions.

PS: After all this talking, do we have real cases of good games on 360 and PS3 that caused a net loss to their developers? For example, what do we know about GTAIV (huge costs) or Valkiria Chronicles (poor sales)?

It's not projected, it's for the fiscal year ending 2009-03-31 (fiscal years often use weird notation like that). That's why I wrote "2009 to date" in the other thread.

My argument is that PS3/360 budgets are the biggest factor in gaming companies losing money these days, and that that's largely due to expenses related to making high-quality graphics. It's established that PS3/360-level graphics are much more expensive than Wii-level graphics, that has been confirmed even by Sony's 1st parties as well as several 3rd parties.

As for the question in your PS, it's not really just about good games. Not all games are good and companies have to find a way to survive flops. The bigger the budgets, the more impact a single flop has on the company. That's why budgets have to be reduced.

If I had to give an example and since we're talking about EA there's Mirror's Edge:

http://weblogs.variety.com/the_cut_scene/2008/12/ea-sports-escap.html

-Confirming what I reported yesterday, "Mirror's Edge" seems to be doing very poorly. Asked how new properties are performing, the best Riccitiello could say about DICE's parkour action game is "'Mirror's Edge' is one that was very strongly reviewed. It's going to go forward. We're going to look at some issues in the design to make sure a strong IP is married to a strong business."