Did GT5 make a profit?

[dunno001]

Hrm... gotta love all the fuzzy numbers people are throwing around. Fact is, we don't know if it made money or not. What we know, is that they ESTIMATED the game budget at $60 million, late in 2009. The game was acknowledged to be in development for 5 years as of that time. So where can we go from here? Well, if we were to assume linear costs, the development cost at release will be $72 million, and this is before advertising is factored in.<BR><BR> So how much is made on a copy? Let's start at the $30 MSRP and work backwards. The retailer take is, on average, 20% of this price. So $24 is paid out to Sony. While Polyphony Digital is owned by Sony, that doesn't mean that this entire $24 went to PD. Sony has other divisions to balance the book with. They'll start at the licensing cost, which is estimated to be $10 per game, attributed to the gaming and network division. $14 goes on to PD, but this does not include things like printing and pressing costs, shipping costs, retailer return costs, defective, etc. $10 each might be a fair assessment for PD's books. And of course, these numbers are net, pre-tax. So a business tax will be assessed at the end of the year on this profit.<BR><BR> We also have the issue of revenue from bundled games. With PD being owned by Sony, I would guess that Sony used the software, and absorbed the pressing costs into gaming for marketting and promotional purposes. Suffice to say, PD did not get $10 per copy on those games. Claiming they have is akin to saying that Nintendo was paid $40 for every copy of Wii Sports that sold. (And we all know how that's not true.)<BR><BR> In short, no, they've not profitted yet. They may, if they don't let the actual advertising budget spiral out of control. I would say that a fair number to assume for sales would again be 5 million (I'm not saying it will stop here, rather, that this is a safe number), and budget the advertising costs to allow the game to not lose with all costs together. We also get the issue of costs with the bundles again, making this even harder to estimate. Time will see; if handled well, they're fine. If they keep spending recklessly, then we might have another GTA4 money-loser on our hands. (GTA4 statement based on RockStar losing money in the release quarter of GTA4.)