Hynad said:
Teeqoz said:
Hynad, the ratio between 80% of 60 and 80% of 40 is exactly the same as the ratio between 60 and 40. 3 to 2. lol.
There is a huge difference between the development costs of say, FF XV, and that of DQ XI. The increase in development costs doesn't inherently come from developping on a home console, but frol better graphics, which you'd expect on a home console. Now, I doubt DQ XI is gonna be a graphical beast, but it'll have rather good production values. However, it'll probably not surpass 50 million (and that's highballing it, GTA V cost 110 million, and that was decelopped for PS3, 360, PS4, XBO, and PC, and has a massive open world.), versus a low 15 million on the 3DS (low estimate). the difference between the lowest for 3DS and the highest for PS4 is still "only" 35 million, and more realisticly, the difference is 15 million. Which isn't that much. So if we say DQ XI PS4 cost 35 million to make, and the publisher gets an 80% cut of the 60$, so 48$ per copy, they'd have to sell 730k copies to breakeven, While for the handheld, with 15 million, and 80% of 40, 32$, they'd have to sell 460k copies to break even. But for each copy sold after the breakeven point, they'll make more money on one PS4 copy sold than one 3DS copy sold.
If we say the 3DS one would've sold 4.5 million (the DS DQ sold 5.7 million), that would be 4.1 million copies sold after our hypothetical breakeven point, so 4.1 mill x 32$= 131 million profit.
If the PS4 game sold 3 mill (I think that's rather conservative actually) that would be 2.3 million sold after the hypethetical breakeven point, so 2.3 mill x 48$= 110 million profit. Now sure, they're sacrificing 20 million shirt term, but add to that the other things I said (They wanna increase PS4 jap userbase, they want to make a home console game, they want DQ to grow in the west) then it's obvious it isn't just because of bias.
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Your first sentence was out of place. I didn't put this into question. So I will question what your problem is.
As for the rest, you basically illustrated what I meant. They will break even faster with handheld games because they cost much less to produce. At 15 million for a 3DS game, you're inflating what it costs to produce most of them by quite a big margin. If a game like Witcher 2 (two) cost 12.5M to develop and was cutting edge on PC when it came out, surely you don't believe a 3DS game will cost nearly as much today. DS games would typically cost between 500K and 2M to produce (look it up) . It is very doubtful 3DS games would now cost around 15M to make... After all, back then, they usually needed to sell only 100k copies to break even.
Simply put, developers don't get a 80% cut. During the 7th gen, for example, they'd typically get around 15$ per unit sold.
As for the rest that you typed, games on console go down in price quite fast, meaning the cut to the devs don't go higher as time goes by, but lower.
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You said "That's not quite how it works, developers get a % cut" and I just said that that is quite irrelevant because the ratio remains the same. I gotta ask why you even brought it up when you know that the ratio remains the exact same.
I did look up development costs for the DS, apparently the "maximum" was 500k. But guess what, according to the same source, the "maximum" for a PS3 game was also 3 million USD.... So I think it's safe to assume that is for smaller titles, not gigantic AAAs like Dragon Quest. But sure, if we say the budget for a DQ 3DS would be 5 million USD, you just need to add 10 million to the 131 million we had, so 141 million vs the 110 million I estimated for the PS4 game. Also, you are indeed correct, the developers don't get close to 80% of the MSRP.
Yes, the 80% was just a figure I chose, but the retailer cut is 25%, the rest goes to the publisher, which the pub in turn needs to divide, some of those 75% goes to the platform holder, some goes to the developer, some of it goes to cover shipping and packing, some of it covers the cost of unsold units, etc. But I think we can agree all those % stay roughly the same regardless if it releases on the PS4 or the 3DS. I'll do the math with a 50% share for the publisher (after costs are covered, aka platform royalty, shipping etc.)
40$x0.5x4.5mill=90, minus 5 million budget, 85 million $.
60$x0.5x3mill=90, minus 35 million budget (which is insane if we assume the 3DS version has a budget of 5 million), 55 million $. 30 million difference. Add in some cash from Sony, SE wants to increase PS4 userbase, they want to make a home console game and all the other reasons I mentioned, and once again, it obviously isn't just because japanese 3rd parties are biased against Nintendo.
And may I remind you, this is severely overestimating budget of the PS4 version, and underestimating sales from PS4 version (the last one is debatable though, but I think so at least.)
