1. GTA IV is sold to retailers at $49.99 ... GameStop doesnt make almost next to nothing from new games. Used games is where the money flows in.
2nd ... Game Development is a fixed cost. Therefore $100 Million spent does not limit the # of games that could be sold. Selling 1 Million and selling 10 Million copies still meas RockStar spent $100 Million to develop the game. And copying DVD disks and plastics boxes and shipping them out in cardboard boxes probably cost at most $1. (Take 2 owns their own distribution unit, Jack of All Games.)
3. Microsoft paid Take 2 $50 Million ... it was not a loan, for additional exclusive content. Depending on how the contract went, this payment was either just for just the exclusivity (which is most probable) or the actual content.
4. Most of the money was spent towards developing the next Gen RAGE engine. It was first shown in the table tennis series and will be used in Midnight Club. It will also be featured in most of RockStars games in the future.
5. Analysts are predicting $400 Million worth of sales for opening week ... at $100 Million in development costs ... well we can already see GTA IV is very freakin profitable ... it prints money
6. Take 2 never borrowed any money to make the game ... most of the money spent was from the cash pile they built up from GTA III, GTA Vice City, and GTA SA. Sadly, this pile of money was also whittled down because of frivilous lawsuits by certain individuals name Jack last name Thompson, a certain hot coffee scandel, accounting scandel in the corporate office, yeah I can go on ...
7. The overall math of how much each GTA IV sale will make:
1 Unit of GTA IV = $60
Amt sold to Retailers: $50
MSFT & SNE licensing fees: 15% of $50 (Not $60) = $7.5
Cardboard boxes, plastic wrapping, blank DVDs, etc. = $1-2
Not sure who pays for transportation ... I think it is retailers.
Marketing & Promotion = ??? Sorry no estimate here since I am still having difficult trying to figure out who paid for which ad ... GameStop, Microsoft, Sony, Best Buy, RockStar, and so on.
RockStar royalities = I think this is 30% of what is left over (30% of $40) ... but not sure so = $12-13
So overall TTWO should pocket $28 - 30 per sold. (No tax needed cause TTWO had lost so much money in the past they aint paying taxes for 2008 and most of 2009).
So 100,000,000 / 28 = ~3.5 Million copies sold for standard editions.
Hopefully this helps you guys out a bit.
