By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Max King of the Wild on 18 March 2013
Edit Thread
osed125 said:
Max King of the Wild said:
zarx said:
Max King of the Wild said:

Did I forget that? 50-120mil WW means 10-20mil in Japan... so they break even with entire development and Japans marketing in Japan alone and the rest of the world just needs to cover marketing. That rule of thumb is the most retarded thing I've heard. The rule of thumb is have your economist do a function of costs and find the optimal cost to maximize return. There is a rule of deminishing returns that says at certain point more marketing would just mean your spending more money.

I may have over exagerated the length it would take but the majority (95%) of those 1.9mil were at full price (obviously you just need to look at FW compared to total) so that means 95mil in Japan alone. Left to make up ~50mil in the rest of the world which would be a piece of cake.


I read it in an article writen by a guy that was in the industry a few years ago, it seems to hold up from what I have seen from actual budget numbers that have been released for example http://digitalbattle.com/2007/02/03/capcom-spent-20-million-on-lost-planet-marketing/. generally the bigger the game the greater percentage of your total budget will be marketing, COD: MW2 had a production budget of ~$40-50m and marketing budget of ~$200m for example http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/11/-video-game-call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2-gets-hollywoodscale-launch.html. Tim Schafer also claims marketing budget often being 200% of the production budget http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Tim-Schafer-Compares-Past-Video-Game-Budgets-Current-Budgets-39474.html. 

If true, it would explain why a lot of studios are going south dont cha think? There is no reason to market it that much. At a certain point you just spending more money then you could possibly make back.

If you don't market the game, it won't sell, it's as simple as that. Free forms of marketing (like Facebook for example) are not enough to make people know about your game. High budget games and marketing go hand in hand, one can't live without the other. That's why very few games end up being successful. 

In the case of Activision, CoD makes them so much money that they can afford to lose a few millions marketing other games, but very few companies are able to do that. 

That still doesn't mean it is a good business move. And you say activision can do that. SE can not though. They are already in trouble. And like I said, at a certain point of marketing your game you won't get any extra sales. The idea is to find the point that maximizes profit. Which would not be doubling your development budget.