| Teeqoz said: -snip- |
I said they get a %, because that's what you brought up, but I then added the important part which is that the game cost is a huge factor to take into consideration when you want to know how many units they need to sell to break even. Big games on consoles cost more than ever to produce. But they don't sell for more than they did during prior gens. So they need to sell a lot more to break even. 3DS games cost barely more than they did on the DS. They don't need to sell as many copies as their console counterpart to break even.
That's just basic. You said "a home console game doesn't have to do as much in raw numbers to make as much money".
But that simply isn't true because of the increased cost to actually make such games. That's unless you mean indie games, then I'd agree. I think you're confused between games "moving money" and "devs making money". A console game will move a lot of money. But it also has to move quite a bit more money than 3DS games to start making profit. A big game right now costs on average between 20M and 50M to make. And quite a few games go even higher than that. They will need to "do much more in raw numbers" to start making money compared to handheld games, which I'll reiterate ony need to sell around 100k-200k units to break even and start profitting. The fact that the cut they get for a console games is barely different than for a handheld game should give you a better idea of the big picture.
With what I provided, let me give you an example:
- 3DS game development cost = 2M
- PS4 game development cost = 25M
Now, let's use the industry average of profit per unit sold, which is around 15$ and 10$ (25% of 60$ and 40$ respectively).
The 3DS game has to sell 133k units to cover its costs and start turning a profit, while the PS4 game has to sell roughly 1.7M
Now let's say both are good sellers and both sell the same amount of units. Let's say 3M. Let's see how much profit each of them will turn:
For the 3DS game: 3M x 10 - 2M = 28M
For the PS4 game: 3M x 15 - 25M = 20M
So do you now understand the issue I had with what you said ("a home console game doesn't have to do as much in raw numbers to make as much money")... ? To start profiting more than a 3DS game, the PS4 game has to sell A LOT. 3M is the average for big seller exclusives, which Dragon Quest XI is most likely going to be.
And as for your source, I suggest you try looking into more sources to get a proper idea of what it costs and how much developers profit from sales...
As for the bias part, I've never agreed to that point.
