Ueda speaks about The Last Guardian.

[Slimebeast]

I think normally with an expected 4 year development time for this type of game and a typical ~$20 million dev budget it would have had a decent chance at breaking even. Even making a good profit if it met all expectations selling 1.5-2 million.

Now with a 8 year dev time if it comes out in 2014 (and I'm being generous here since SotC came out in 2005), and dev costs with a 50 member team is ~$5 million per year, and add to that $5-10 million total for promotion and marketing, we end up at a total cost of $45-50 million.

Sony collects around $30 per copy sold in a best case scenario, meaning the game could break even at ~1.5 million lifetime copies. Unlikely but not entirely impossible.