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Slimebeast on 12 June 2009
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mrstickball said:
silicon said:

I had some basic questions relating to the gaming industry and thought this was the perfect place to ask:

When people mention companies like Sony or MS giving money to developers for exclusives, do they mean payments, or capital investments?

What's the average cost to develop a game for PS3, X360, PSP,  DS, Wii?

How much does a developer make per sale of a game?

How much does a publisher make per sale of a game?

And any other information similar/related to this, please post... thanks!!!
  1. Usually, when a company gives money to developers for exclusives, it can be paid in many different ways. Some do it by publishing the game for them, which saves money (eg, Microsoft and Gears of War). Others by free marketing, and still others by capital investments.
  2. Average costs for a PS3/360 title range from $10m for a low/mid budget X360 title (add a few m for a PS3 title), and up to $30-40m for a high-budget 360 title, and $50m for a high budget PS3 title. Wii is between $5-10m on most titles, but it can always be  more or less depending on scope. DS is around $1-$5m depending on title, and I would assume PSP is about triple of the DS.
  3. Devs make about $30-40 per title, depending on the company and what system it's on. A developer will make more money per game on a 360 at $60 than a Wii dev at $50.
  4. Pubs make $1-3 per game, AFAIK.

No 3 & 4 is crazy talk mrstick. With $1-3 per game, you are thinking of distributors.

Between dev and publisher it's a lot more even. I'd say dev gets $25 and publisher $15 on average, something like that (on average, it varies a lot depening on if the game underperformed or overperformed - if a game underperforms, the proportion of money can actually become for example $50 per copy to the develeoper and -$10 to publisher, because many titles simply are a loss to the publisher). 

Publishers need to take such a high proportion of money because they pay for all all the marketing and extra expenses, plus they take the bigger financial risk with funding the game and taking care of all losses.