| sguy78 said: I wonder what kind of sales they will need just to break even. |
Correct me if I'm wrong. But doesn't creating the graphics and physics engines cost the majority of the money?
If so I don't think The Conduit will have to have all that impressive sales to break even. Why, because all of High Voltages upcoming titles are using the technology pioneered by The Conduit. So their sales will add up and lead to the R&D costs breaking even. Of course if we lump all of the R&D into the game I'd say that in bulk sales around 300k should break them even.
Since Sega only shipped 150K for the launch they obviously didn't expect it to do overwhelmingly good. Sega also invested in High Voltage and if they didn't expect The Conduit to sell any more then 150k during the launch I highly doubt the dev costs were too high. Sega is not a dumb company they wouldn't have invested to heavily in a product they didn't expect to shatter the charts.
So I'm guessing High Voltage was able to keep costs low and by creating their own Physic's/Graphics engine they are able to cheaply produce future software. High Voltage doesn't have to worry about liscensing engines and obviously it didn't cost them a fortune to produce the Conduit as they are now making two more properties using the same engine.
I suspect 300k will break them even maybe as much as 500k but I doubt it. Not to mention The Conduit will have legs so it should at least break even!
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
