Reggie says most Wii games can make a profit with under a million sold.

[MaxwellGT2000]

WereKitten said:

MaxwellGT2000 said:

Wow, what a way to make up numbers and spin things to suit your own argument... my head spins reading this.  You say "on average 190M" and set sales at 25M when games like GTA IV haven't even hit 15M MW2 has hit the 17M mark and might be able to hit 25M if it doesn't drop off harder cause of market saturation of said title.  (PC sales for both have been said to be rather weak, mainly because both were pretty terrible ports)

When the marketing budget for MW2 was 200M alone without development costs added in (http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/51534/Modern-Warfare-2-Cost-200-Million-Hidden-Game-Modes-Unlocked-On-PC) 

So really you can theoretically make more money if you somehow can achieve such sells on the HD consoles, but they haven't and thats why publishers, developers, and other game companies are hurting.  You low balled the marketing cost, you overshot expected sales by a mile, and then act like 25M is able to happen without the game going down to budget price.

This is utterly absurd, your idea could work if it happened in practice, but it doesn't and nothing this gen has even pulled those kinds of numbers except for Wii games (so far Wii Sports, pack in, and Wii Play, which Mario Kart Wii coming along)... it really baffles me.  

Anyway, you're just flat out wrong on the DLC thing, on Wii you can sell and support DLC, hell every game that sells DLC clearly has it marked on the box, the SD cards have been opened up to developers to take advantage of, if they don't then its their own fault, I know Guitar Hero and Rock Band have and likely benefited from it.  

First of all, I did not make up numbers to suit my argument and I'm not spinning things. I put in numbers that seemed in the right ballpark for what was being discussed: blockbusters like GTAIV and MW2. My estimates: a project as big as MW2 or GTAIV would nowadays aim for 25M copies among PS3, 360 and PC platforms. It would have a marketing budget on average of $100-150M. If you think these assumptions are extremely off, please explain why, and keep the discussion on the track of the sales and profits instead of accusing people of having hidden agendas. There's no need to get aggressive and really as a moderator you should learn to behave better on the forums.

Back to the gist of it: MW2 went all out on marketing, but you really want to use its numbers instead of "blockbuster average estimates"? You're served:

Call of Duty cost $40 million to $50 million to produce, people close to the project said, about as much as a mid-size film. Including marketing expenses and the cost of producing and distributing discs, the launch budget was $200 million, on par with a summer popcorn movie -- and extremely high for a video game.

is the quotation from the original LA Times article. The bold is mine and since it says "including" I read it as a $40-50M developing cost to a grandtotal of $200M budget at launch, meaning $150-$160M of distribution and marketing costs.

I might be wrong, since English is not my first language, so let's even say that it's $45M of developing costs and an extra $200M of distribution and marketing.

Vgchartz tracks the game at 10.31M+7.54M+PC sales. Even with only a couple million copies sold on PC that's in the range of 20M copies, and it sold 200K copies (+PC) last week. That would mean with the numbers you endorse, an estimated 20M*$22-$245M= $195M profit to date. A factor should be taken in account for the decrease of price at retail, but we're still early on in the game's life so I won't apply it neither here nor in the Wii case.

Now we have to make a few estimates for the Wii case: let's say that developing MW2 on the Wii instead would have cost around $15M (improving an existing engine, reduced costs for assets, same amount of netcode and dedicated servers development). Let's say that Activision had gone for half the distribution and marketing costs as LordTheNightKnight suggested, even if it still sounds extreme to me. That amounts to $115M total.

Same profit would need a gross of $310M, needing about 18M copies sold on Wii alone to date. As you can see the point stands that reduced developing costs for a blockbuster (and even cutting wildly the marketing part) still would require a huge sale success relative to the Wii total market.

Lastly, don't twist my words. DLC might be supported on the Wii, but all I said is that it's more likely that extensive DLC for a project like GTA or MW will rake more money on PS3+360+PC - three platforms versus one, each one with higher average network utilization than the Wii and a longer proved history of episodic content/expansion packs.

Again, the fact that blockbusters are an extreme case is not the point. That's the case that was being discussed and for which LordTheNightKnight asked for a modicum of math, that's what I brought to the plate.

 

I didn't say you had a hidden agenda at all, but rather taking extremes of numbers to suit your argument, if you feel that it also means you have a hidden agenda with that, then it's your own conscience talking not me.  

As for the 200M thing yeah that was my own goof, since I swear I saw 200M marketing budget being thrown around on the forums, likely a misquote or some such, went and googled the article and didn't check the quote.  

My other issue with the math you're using is where is the money that publishers and developers are making per title coming from?  And you also leave out factors such as Activision themselves released Guitar Hero at 60 dollars on Wii, if they were to make MW2 on Wii with the huge budget as well, then they could just as easily hike the price up to 60 dollars.  Also are you trying to impose the hypothetical if instead of MW2 on PS3, PC, and 360 that its Wii exclusive and trying to make the same amount of profits?  Cause if not then you have to figure the marketing budget is shared between all the platforms, like with World at War, the same channels that aired the HD version commercials also aired the Wii version, though it might have been stupidly done a month after the game released for the Wii version, it still stands that they had marketing contracts with these companies and channels and it's all shared.

But the killing point is this, which is the main idea, with no game are you guaranteed sales.  A budget so high with marketing even higher, if you don't hit outrageous sales, it's pretty much over for you.  No matter how you look at that strategy, its rather bad, I'd never invest my money into a company that would gamble its own livelyhood in one game.  Your original argument was talking about best financially, and there's a reason game companies are dying >_>