| Bamboleo said: I thought Bayonetta with 480K on X360 and 530K on PS3 was a pure flop. I remember to see that a game needs to sell more than 1 Million to break even on any of the HD consoles. |
I doubt that, because that would mean it cost 20 million to make the game.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/19/ps3-xbox360-costs-tech-cx_rr_game06_1219expensivegames.html
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For the companies that do put next-generation titles out early, making a profit is tough. Namco Bandai president Takeo Takasu said his company needs to sell at least 500,000 copies of each PlayStation 3 game it creates to make a profit. Analysts predict that some other publishers will need to clear 1 million units to get in the black--and start making about $1 per game sold.
The remaining $59 per game goes into many hands. The biggest portion--nearly 45%--goes toward simply programming and designing the game itself. Then the console maker, retailer and marketers each get a cut. Add in manufacturing and management costs, and depending on the type of game, a license fee. Some gamemakers also have to pay a distributor to help get their titles in stores."
As you can see, 1$ per game is put into "profit". Another 45% pays for the dev costs.
So, for a 50$ game, about 20$ per title is going into dev costs.
At 500k in sales, the devs have paid off 10M$ worth of costs whereby the overflow goes into profit, and they have made 500k$ in straight profit. To illustrate, if the game costs 8M to make and they sold 500k copies at 50$ per, they just made 2.5M in profit. (10M dev's cut, minus 8M dev cost, plus 1$ per copy sold.)
However, for all intents and purposes, the average HD game is 60$ at launch, where the bulk of the sales are, so they are actually making .45X60$= ~27$. At 500k sold, that's 13.5M for dev costs. Only the highly produced games like Call of duty and metal gear solid or Halo/Gears of War actually require 20M$+ to make. Most regular games cost between 2M and 20M to make.
