How many copies does a game have to be sold for it to considered successful?

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twesterm said:

Found my notes.  First off, we have to assume that successful games are generally extremely polished and HQ.  For this, we're making a modest game with a modest budget with a modest team.

• People
  
  • 20 people x $50k/year (our AVG) x 1.5 years (extremely conservative) = $1.5 million on salary
•  Equipment
  
  • 20 x $15k (consoledev kit, PC, ect) = about $0.3 million
• Overhead
  • salary * 50% = $0.75 million

So that's about $2.5 million for a modest game with a modest team, but do remember we're cutting corners everywhere here.  Now for the next part.

• Cost of goods (remember, these are special CD's and DVD's)
  
  • CD's: $1.00
  •  DVD's: $2-4
  • Game Disk$12-15
  • 200,000 (copies) SKU x $15 = $3million
• Marketing
  • $0.5million
  • typically $2-10 million
  • MDF (marketing development funds) 6% of the wholesale price

So that's about $7million to make a game while cutting every corner possible.  Knowing what I said above about successful games are exremely polished and HQ, this game likely isn't but lets go on and pretend it is.

Assume our game is being sold at a $40 price point and we make $15 on every game, we would have to sell 470,000 copies to break even.

Assume our game is being sold at a $50 price point and we make a $25 profit on every game, we would have to sell 280,000 to break even.

 

So yeah, that's a very modest example, but it's a good place to start when trying to figure out why games are so expensive and why some things are priced the way they are. 

 

Thanks for the info Twesterm! Any idea what kind of difference there would be between Wii and PS3 and 360 games? 

Also, if the Wii is much less espensive to develop for, why do 3rd parties avoid it like the plague?

Also, would it be cheaper to make a game with cut corners on a PS3/360 than to make a top-end Wii game?