FF13 has ALREADY made a Profit?! (Calculations INSIDE)!

[dunno001]

You've made quite a few errors in assumption. First of all, retail price is ￥8800. (With the 5% Japanese tax, you get the ￥9240 retail price posted at Amazon JP.) And the wholesale price in Japan for games isn't quite 60%; the average fluxuates a bit between 50-55%. Erring on the 55% side (since it is a bigger game, and can command that slightly higher wholesale), you get a S-E side take of ￥4840 per copy. At 1.8m copies, this is revenue of ￥8.712b. However, you have to first factor in per copy costs. (Technically, first would be the publisher's cut, but since it's the same as the developer, I've skipped that.) Per copy costs on a single unit never seem too bad, but one must also remember the scale of it when dealing with in excess of 1m items. These costs I can not give you, as it would depend on what was printed where, pressed where, made where, etc. If it were all in done directly in Japan, I'd not be surprised if per unit costs exceeded ￥500, for the case, pressing the BR, printing the manual and cover, and shipping. Allowing for the total cost to be just that ￥500, net revenue per copy is ￥4340, or ￥7.812b at 1.8m copies. If I also allow production costs to be $80m, using your same crude ￥100=$1, production costs are ￥8b, a figure not yet reached. And this doesn't start to factor advertising costs.

Of course, what I am doing is also loaded with a ton of assumptions, of which I'd not be surprised if at least 1 is wrong. The only ones who will know for certain on this game are the bean-counters at S-E. Truth be told though, with Wada wanting it to outsell FF7 (not gonna happen), I would guess that he also allowed the budget to go unchecked for a little too long. My guess is that development was about ￥10b, with another ￥1.5-2b on advertising. On a series that is expected to make money, I'm seeing it as a potential disappointment as of now, but again, the final call is not mine. But if my figures are right, S-E will need the overseas sales to break even, but first more costs (localizations, QC, etc) will need to be incurred. We shall see how sales will go on this, though...