osed125 said:
Let's see this scenario. A 360 and PS3 game cost on average $20 million, you sell aprox 1 million copies at $60, making a revenue of $27 million and profit of $7 million. Based on this, the publisher recovers $27 per game. Wii games cost on average cost $5 million (sorry I couldn't add the specific line, just search for "Nintendo Wii titles cost" and you will find it) to make. Given that Wii games cost $50 lest say the publisher recovers $25 instead of $27 (given that the extra $10 are shared equally between all categories in the anatomy of a game sale) you sell aprox. 600k copies, making a revenue of $15 million and a profit of $10 million. You are actually making more profit out of the Wii game. Granted this is an hypothetical scenario and doesn't apply to games like CoD, but you get the idea. |
A few things to keep in mind:
1. Cost of an HD game is around $20 million for all 3 SKUs (PS3, 360 & PC).
(Focussing solely on console platforms for this first point due to lack of licensing fees and the digital versions being the more sucessful; cuts out the retailer. I'll talk a little about PC in point 2.)
If a game has only broken 1 million when all versions are taken into consideration, it's usually considered a failure (see Enslaved or Bayonetta). For a AAA budget game to be considered sucessful it needs to sell 1 million per console platform, so you can double your revenue and profit totals based on that alone.
2. Both HD consoles and PC (especially PC) have been moving towards a digital distribution model. Sales from these versions will give more profit per unit sold as they're usually sold at RRP but cut out the retailer completely (which is a significant cut based on your pie chart). This is especially true of the PC versions where digital distribution is huge and equates to the majority of sales.
3. Ubisoft in 2008 said that a Wii game costs them around 5-6 million euros which is around $7.8-9 million.
