Ubisoft wanted Splinter Cell: Blacklist to sell 5 million copies - only sold 2 million

[Slimebeast]

famousringo said:

Slimebeast said:

Good pint. That's something I never understood, why publishers cancel or put on hold fairly solid looking titles that are at least halfway through development.  Like Bethesda and Prey 2 or Lucasarts and Star Wars Battelfront and Star Wars 1313. It's like throwing away money.

Because they don't want to fall into the sunk costs trap:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy

The implication is that even if the publisher gave the game a spit polish and kicked it out the door to die, it wouldn't expect to make enough money back to pay for the spit. Brand damage, retailer returns, etc.

Well brand damage is a good argument, but it's also hard to estimate.

I wonder how the equation would be calculated for a game like Duke Nukem Forever. You could prob argue that the sink cost at some point would not be worth it, but the company decided to go forward anyway. It would be interesting to know the calue of the brand damage. I think the brand damage for Duke Nukem was enormous, almost to the point that we will never see anything labeled Duke Nukem anymore in gaming.