Crytek nearly launched Crysis 3 on WiiU but it had to die

[zarx]

Mnementh said:

zarx said:

Mnementh said:

And looking at general gaming-sales: Every budget that needs more than 1 million units to break even is stupid and the risk of losses is extremely high. Most AAA-games should break even on some 100K units. Porting-costs are usually much more smaller (i pointed out the reasons in the previous paragraph). Some 10K sounds reasonable for a port of a AAA-game with some effort put into making it a good port.

Are you kidding? A game that would break even at 100k units is be very definition not AAA, a $3-4 total budget game is relegated to downloadable/indie games and shovelware. Hell in todays market a 1 million unit break even point would be a B teir game  in the eyes of the major publishers. Your average AAA game has a production budget of $20-50 million plus marketing which is usally about as much as the production budget so break even for most AAA games is somewhere between ~1-3m units at full price with some of the bigger games such as CoD, GTA etc needing 4-8m units to break even on their $50-100 million development budgets and even bigger marketing budgets.

Well, 300K-700K I assume at full retail price for a game like Crysis. If it needs millions to break even, we would never had seen a sequel (because companies don't want to barely break even, they want to make profit). 10% for a port, more for a GOOD gamepad-integration. Most AAA-games should be in the area of some 100K (=multiple times 100K). Only a few probably can calculate with millions sold units at full price for breaking even, COD is one of these rare examples. Although I assume Activision also happily calculates with less and cashes in on the franchise.

The first Crysis game had a budget of $22m, it went on to sell 3.5 million units mostly at a budget price and was profitable. Crysis 3 has a budget around three times bigger according to Crytek and that is without marketing. It's break even is likely somwhere around 2.5 million units. Crysis 2 managed almost 3 million units according to VGChartz not counting PC digital sales. CoD Modern Warfare 2 had a budget of an estimated $40-50m plus over $200m in marketing making it's break even point more than 7 million units but CoD games sell tens of millions and brings in $billions each year so they can afford it. Some analysts have estimated that GTA 5 has a development budget is around $137m and will likely have a marketing budget to match. Skyrim had a total budget of development plus marketing of $85m giving it a 2.5m unit break even. Darksiders 2 had a 2 million unit break even etc. These kinds of budgets aren't even new Final Fantasy 7 aparently cost $45m back in the day which ajusted for inflation is $64.23 million which is more than FF XIII with a $50-60m budget. AAA games are bloody expensive http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_video_games.

A barebones Wii U port aparently costs ~$1m which is around 30k units at full price $60 not counting marketing etc, but more importantly means valuable man hours that may be better spent on other projects.