Slimebeast said:
Zim said:
Slimebeast said:
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.
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Pretty good estimate I think. Only thing I would say you are off on is marketing and promotion. $5-10million would be a tiny amount. At the very start of the generation Lost Planet had $20million in marketing. Admittedly that game had a reasonable marketing push but it was also 6 years ago, or 7-8 by the time this game is released.
I would say $50million isn't an unreasonable guess though. I think Team Ico is a little smaller than 50 members but then there is the extra cost of having to rope in people from other parts of sony etc.
Team Ico's model simply isn't going to work going forward. I know they aren't a big team but they also aren't exactly some tiny indie team. You can't have a reasonable sized team with over 6 years between releases and still no sight of when they will actually have a release.
EDIT: Should add joystiq had an article about Studio Cipher Prime. Which only employs 4 people. Their montly costs were 15k.
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Good. You too believe in high marketing costs (in that publishers have them, not that it's a good thing). I have debated many here on VGC who always claim my marketing cost estimations are too high.
With $5-10 million for marketing I was thinking a scenario where Sony has half-abandoned the game and almost silently releases it, as hype has died down and perhaps the game will come at an ill time (it's possible it's a PS3-only release well into next gen).
This article says Team ICO is 50 guys (thord paragraph). With the problems TLG has had I wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit smaller now though.
http://www.1up.com/news/team-ico-boss-fumito-ueda-leaving-sony
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If they are buying TV advertising involved, yes marketing is expensive. Just one Prime time spot in LA only can cost more than $5,000. That's just one commercial in one market aired only once. If the company decides to buy one national spot during the Super Bowl that is going to run $1 - $4 million dollars, just for 30 seconds.
Edit: I'm not just making this up. Buying TV advertising is what I do for a living.
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