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

[Lawlight]

Max King of the Wild said:

Augen said:
So, some dumbed down math here for me.

It sold ~2 million copies
It cost 16.7 to produce and 23.3 to market; total being 40 million Euros
It made more than 100 million Euros
Thus, a profit of at least 60 million Euros on selling ~2 million copies

Stories like this make me wonder how other games struggle to make money in similar situations. This model seems to be very attainable, if this game sold half as much as it did it still would have been profitable, correct? Why do so many developers and publishers struggle nowadays if a million units sold could make money on an expensive title? I am guessing I am missing something here.

Good question. Heavy Rain was also high budget. I doubt most games have a higher budget than it had. However, it's probably on the low end spectrum of the games that do such as CoD and GTA. I'd also like to point out that the people who estimate games to be upwards of 50mil without marketing are absolutely crazy. The games with those types of budgets are far and few between.

So, back to your question. How do game developers who mostly develop low budget games (comparatively) struggle? Hmm... I wonder... Do do do do do do do... do do do do doot do do do do (thats the jepordy song)... Only thing I can think of is maybe multiplats aren't as lucrative as some may think.

Most big games like Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider and Mass Effet have a much bigger budget than that.