Heavy Rain cost €16.7 million to make and made Sony "more than €100 million"

[Ail]

Slimebeast said:

Some here have rightfully tried to expose this blatant lie and do their own calculations.

2.4 million copies at $30 gives $72 million in total revenue to the publisher (Sony). This assumes that all copies were sold at full price, but let's assume that for arguments sake.

Now how much did the game exactly cost including marketing? I have a hard time believing it really cost €40 million including marketing because that means over $50 million in total spend which just sounds unrealistic for a fairly "niche" game like Heavy Rain. Also, if it truly was $50 million that would only leave $22 million in profits to split between Sony and Quantic Dreams. So the €40 million (=$50 million) figure was just speculation from the Quantic guys' part.

Most likely this guy in the interview only had the €16.7 million dev cost (what his own studio spent) correct since he doesn't seem to have any clue about publisher economics. Anyway, €16,7 translates to around $22 million and if we add a more reasonable $15 million for marketing the total spend becomes $37 million. $37 million would need 1.2 million copies sold to break even, which also sounds like a reasonable original sales target for Heavy Rain.

So in conclusion, a reasonable estimation of total profit lands at $72 million minus $37 million = $35 million, which is very far from "more than €100 million" (=$130 million), but still very impressive.

Your estimates are correct except that Sony and Quantic probably do not split the profit. It depends on their contract but typically the publisher will get a much higher share of them .( depending on contract in some cases the contract can be such that the developer only recoups development cost until the game reach certain milestones and then the developer starts sharing the profit, before those milestones the publishers pockets all profits..)

But yes I agree with you, the majority of the people do not understand how retail works at all.

As for copies being sold at full price, that is actually a half decent assumption as if a retailer drops the price it does not necessary means the money the publisher gets drops too ( the retailer gets the game for roughly 30$, recommended price is 60$, it's up to the retailer to pick a price in between, no matter what he picks, the publisher will still get 30$ per copy ( at least for the first few months, later on things can change as publisher can drop the recommended price and their share..)