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jammy2211 on 11 April 2010
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jarrod said:
MonstaMack said:

For once I think Pachter is right. Retailers do get a good chunk ($12 seems fair) for each game. I think with a 50 million dollar budget a game should easily break a million or more (if not It would be a flop, wouldn't it?) but it makes you wonder how much the average Wii game costs, or games like Deadly Premonition. Obviously not every game costs the same to make.

 

I work in retail and the mark up % did account to close to $12 profit per game. I think it was around $4 for a $20 game, so that means budget games have to sell a lot more or actual be budget in budget development costs (lol). So I hope Deadly Prem didn't run them much.

Does he also factor in price cuts? I mean if the game drops to $40 it has to obviously sell more to make up for the difference.

Average multiplatfom HD game R&D budget: $15-30m, AAA HD games regularly exceed $40m

Average Wii game R&D budget: $5-7m

Average budget for GC/PS2/Xbox games last gen: $3-5m

For AAA HD games, typically advertising budgets match or exceed development budgets.

And a few random R&D budgets...

  • Gears of War: $10m (no engine/tech costs, built "for free" alongside UE3)
  • Red Steel: $12m
  • Spore: $35m
  • Gran Turismo 5: $60m
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: $100m+
  • Modern Warfare 2: $40-50m ($200m advertising budget)

 I'm sure you didn't mean to but your figures are slightly misleading to how much AAA games cost last gen - for instance Final Fantasy VIII - XII all cost over $30 million, Onimusha and DMC both cost Capcom over $12 million and Mario 64 over $25 million (Albeit inflated due to not knowing the N64 specs before developmenet started). We've all heard about Shenmue too... (All figures taken from Famitsu I believe)

 The real difference now seems to be that EVERY game has to be a AAA budget epic, whereas before there was a viable market for lower investiment, lower payoff type games. We've now seen consumers group towards 4-5 megahits leaving there no room for cheaper games, I guess.