Pachter: Lame Games like TLG and Shenmue 3 Won't Sell Many Units

[Areaz32]

S.T.A.G.E. said:

Areaz32 said:

No TLG didn't have outrageous resource demands. Sony is the publisher so that means approx $33 of the initial $60 is what they make on each sale (from retail) and development of the game is not even touching anything the likes of FFXV. FFXV has been excessive in its development budget.

The last guardian has a relatively small team working on it. I mean its almost 2 times Hellogames in size which is nothing. Sure they may have hired more after 2012 where they moved to PS4 but it is a low budget AAA title compared to games from the Uncharted series or the Killzone series.

FFXV is in the hundreds of millions to develop, i would be surprised if The Last Guardian is anywhere near the 30-35 million mark.

Im not saying the game will need anywhere near the sales of FFXV but rather it will need to make a profit to justify its similar timeframe. This seems to be Sony Japans largest venture to date and was outpaced by the likes of even knack and that made a profit. It says it reached 1.6 million copies sold over here, so it might be slightly more in reality. Much like Square with Final Fantasy, the ICO franchises seem to be Sony Japan's baby and it seemed worth it to keep it alive rather than trashing it. Regardless, everything has a price. 

The game development resources don't just scale with time. The game had essentially been frozen in development for years and years where there weren't any money put into the project. The fact that they had to rehire their director didn't increase the cost particularly.

The game was already a relatively small size production the fact that they might have to increase the budget by 50% is still nowhere near FFXV. 

1 million in sales would be enough to cover the costs to make back what they have spent i am 100% sure.