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Slimebeast on 31 July 2009
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outlawauron said:
Slimebeast said:
outlawauron said:
Slimebeast said:
outlawauron said:
lol, Heavenly Sword marketing cost $10 million. You're just pulling out random numbers here Slimebeast.

Well, marketing in this business is a big part of a publishers expenses. A general rule of thumb is to calculate marketing to be 50% of the development budget. And then adjust on a per game basis according to the general impression of how much the game was announced and amount of previews in media etc. Heavenly Sword was marketed at least as much as an average AAA game. 

Of course it's a big part, but Sony doesn't advertise.

And we don't know that advertising wasn't included in Uncharted's budget number.

Huh? Of course Sony advertise.

And of course the marketing budget wasn't included in the official Uncharted $20 mill dev budget. They never are.

Why not? It's part of the budget for the game. It's part of the process.

 

And no, Sony does not advertise agressively. Certainly not enough to spend $10 million. Talking about Heavenly Sword and Uncharted.


You don't know how it works. I understand you'd think it's logical that it'd be part of the process, but think of it this way:

A developer approaches the publisher with an idea for a game (or the other way around) and they decide on a time-scale and a budget (according to the team size as the most important factor, and estimated development time of course). This budget will change over time depending on how development progresses and in the end you will have a final cost ('budget'). This figure can be announced publicly as soon as the game 'goes gold', and can not be changed after that.

Think of it as a commissioned work by the publisher.

Now depending on how the end result looks, the quality and commercial potential of the product, the publisher will market it accordingly. It's all under his control, and marketing is a separate process where success of the game over time can prolong and increase the marketing efforts and costs. Marketing costs are seldom if ever published to media.