@Outlaw: I was talking about the total sales of 3rd party games.
@Khuutra: Yes... It's odd since it's Kotaku we're talking about.
@Ail: I believe the split depends on the game. If developer and the publisher is the same instance, and to an extent, if there's no different distributor, more money goes to dev/publisher, since it doesn't need to turn profit to every time a copy is forwarded.
I'd recall that SMG was sold to retailers for 35€ (we had a thread about it) and licencing is about 10€, that would leave about 25€ to split between developer and publisher.
@BMaker: I don't know where the million comes from (on a side note, i laughed at Kotaku pointing out how many games sold a million according to NPD, dissing the rest of the world).
If we use Ails estimation, the game (marketing included) should cost 17 million and using my estimation, the game should cost 25 million, for it to brake even at million copies sold. Also, it's worth noticing that 3rd party games tend to be more expensive than 1st party games, when the 3rd party gets more money per unit sold.
Then there are games released at a budget price, which, according to Nintendo, gets a discount on licence fee.
Naturally, 3rd parties price their product by themselves, when we can't say that the dev/publisher gets "this much" from each copy sold and if they are using an outsides intellectual property, they need to pay the licence for the IP (whether it's a one-time cost or a certain percentage out of each unit or both). Also the possible cost for 3rd party engine has to be taken into consideration too.
The million copies sold seems like a high number, but Reggie may have been talking about averages for 1st party games, that generally are quite heavily marketed.
Ei Kiinasti.
Eikä Japanisti.
Vaan pannaan jalalla koreasti.
Nintendo games sell only on Nintendo system.
