Rumour : Insomniac going multiplateform

[Squilliam]

mibuokami said:

Squilliam said:

They were voted one of the best places to work several years running so that also comes into it as well. I suspect that any criticism of their performance should be leveled at their management level people for simply spending their resources in the wrong areas but at the same time they are showing obvious signs of growth so theres no need to be too harsh there.

Their campus has 200 people so considering a large comfortable environment condusive to earning 'best place to work awards' their operating costs may be around $20-25M per year. So based on the rate of sales they are probably earning a decent level of royalties to bank on from Sony even throughout this generation as 2nd party contracts only pay up once development costs are paid for. I can't say that their performance sucks as 1.5-1.7M is much higher than the benchmark 1M given to break even this generation.

Insomniac overall overhead with regards to development is well below most third party and even second party. Not only do they recycle engines (which can sometime be as much as half the development budget) but their contract with Sony easily nets theme some financial solvancy.

They also have a very consistent development cycle that ensure overall viability, as their game is release yearly on the clock, thus a maximum of 2 year cycle with around 100 empolyee (give or take depending on stage of development) which means the cost of mean power over time is well below most big budget development. 1.5 million units sold per game under these circumstance would make nice and profitable projects.

 

I was talking rough manpower vs sales of games per year. A general rule of thumb is $100k per employee per year so multiplied over the 200 employees you get about $20-25M dollars. I allowed for more because they are rated as one of the very best employers in the business so that might mean extra cost.