Heavenly Sword sold about 1.5m but devs didn't break even

[Squilliam]

greenmedic88 said:

Squilliam said:
Probably most games released this generation for HD systems haven't really made money. If you look at the top 10 console owner published games for the DX9 twins you'd probably find only about 8 of those actually made money.

The gaming industry has essentially morphed into the same business model as the American film industry.

It's not all just about raking in huge profits, but selling enough to justify financing the next project, which will presumably cost less to produce if it's another sequel. 

Although with the major publishers like EA, Ubisoft and Activision, one has to wonder why the hell they exist as these huge game corporations if it's not for the purpose of expansion and profits. Usually, they are profitable.

Even the major movie studios release box office clunkers on a regular basis, and yet they still maintain enough hits to keep the films coming.

Well in the film industry sequels cost more than new I.P. as you can pay your actors less, however the pay scale escalates heavily with successful properties whereas the game industry has cheaper/faster production for 2nd/3rd games in the same series whilst having lower marketing requirements. Also both benefit from having sequels because the success of future products also benefits the previously released content, so for example Gears of War 1 adding half a million sales due to the success of Gears of War 2 and furthermore once they release the trilogy the effect will happen again and finally they get the opportunity to re-release their games another time in the next generation and thus turn on 5M selling game into a 20M selling series.