JustThatGamer said:
Most video games don't need to sell as much as you think to break even or make profit. Take God of War: Ascension for example, it cost about the same to develop as God of War III at $44 million (total budget) and even though it sold about 2m by the end of December 2013, which is only half as much as God of War III achieved in the same amount of time, it still made all its money back and then some. Look at this GFK data for European software sales and revenue from January to June 2013: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=668021
As you can see in the case of Sony's God of War: Ascension it made over $35 million by June in Europe alone, when you consider that it sold twice as much in the US and then factor in Japan and the rest of the world it made roughly $130 million by June 2013 and only cost Sony around $40 million. If you fast forward to December 2013 it's now sold roughly 2m and made $170m+ or around $130m+ in profit. I don't know how much of the revenue Sony actually get but I'm guessing it's a good majority of it and they are making a heck of a lot of money. So if even God of War: Ascension made that much money just imagine how much all the really big 5/6m+ exclusive games made? The 2-4 million sellers are making huge money and Sony has plenty of those as well as all their 1m+ sellers like Heavenly Sword, Infamous 2, Resistance 3, Beyond Two Souls, Ratchet & Clank games etc. So again, don't worry about Sony's 1st party, they are doing brilliantly and will only go from strength to strength on the PS4.
Shame about the Splinter Cell series, I loved Chaos Theory but Double Agent and Conviction just wern't that good and so I never even tried Blacklist. |
lol no. Far from it.
1. We have it at 1.6m at the moment. 1.6m * $60 = $96m (at full price)
2. That's just the revenue it caused. Using this Sony makes $34 per game, so 1.6m * $34 = $54.4m (at full price !)
3. Obviously Sony didn't sell 1.6m copies at full price.
In the US: half price since May: https://web.archive.org/web/20130521023826/http://www.amazon.com/God-War-Ascension-Playstation-3/dp/B007TYC8MI
= 10 weeks or about 700k units at full or near full price = 0.7m * $34 = $23.8m
For the rest ~250k = 0.25m * $17 = $4.25m
= ~$28m
In Europe: half price since July: https://web.archive.org/web/20130728204104/http://www.amazon.de/Sony-God-of-War-Ascension/dp/B0080E49IM
(earlier in the UK but likely at the same time in the other European countries) = 20 weeks or about 350k at near full price
The Games in Europe usually vary from 60€ to 70€, so I'm taking 65€. (less in the UK)
They include ~20% tax, so to make it comparable to the US we need to take them off. That makes 52€ or $71. Using same percentage for the breakdown, Sony makes $40 per game (at full price)
= 0.35m * $40 = $14m
For the rest 0.1m * $20 = $2m
= ~ $16m
~200k missing from the Others region. Hard to tell obviously but around $5m.
= ~$49m Sony made from the game.
Budget is "a mid double digit million amount" so probably anything between $40m and $60m. Not including marketing/advertising costs so surely $10m on top of that, so probably $50m - $70m as a whole.
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Hopefully you (and others) now got a better understanding why games NEED high sales. Third party developers even more since they get ~12% less per game (due to the platform royalties).
