Lawlight said:
Max King of the Wild said:
Lawlight said:
Max King of the Wild said:
Lawlight said:
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.
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Most big games like Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider and Mass Effet have a much bigger budget than that.
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Those games aren't most games. Theyre on 3 platforms. Provide a quote from someone who would know the budget say the budget because I doubt it would be ridiculously more.
Twesterm (a developer who worked on Ghostbusters) always said majority of games don't sell more than 300k. I'm sure this is probably something he picked up from the industry and being the case most games must need a budget that would break even on those sales.
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That's why I said most big games. Have a look at this:
http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_video_games
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That list is based off purly speculation.
"Again, nothing exact in terms of total budget for MGS4. In fact, even the development length isn’t clear."
I'm sure the budgets are huge (20mil is huge) but honestly I doubt these people really have a clue how much they cost.
I mean... too human 80mil? Don't you think games like that would be cancelled when they start costing above high budget games without the quality of one without a chance in hell of making it back up. I mean, I honestly think whoever compiled the list just looked at dev length (guessed) and guessed at how much they think it should have cost.
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Dude, it's well known that Too Human had a massive budget and it flopped terribly. It's not mismanagement of funds within the video games industry is something unheard of. As I said, Heavy Rain's budget seems to be about average for a triple-A game.
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Yeah, 20mil is a massive budget. But that list is purely speculation. And the source of that list puts the budget at 60+mil... shows you how much that list is based on speculation. I doubt that when the game started costing upwards of 20mil the solution was to keep throwing money at it. Doom was made with $300,000 and was considered massive at the time. And too human started being developed a few years after that.
