Miyamoto: Breath of the Wild Needs to sell 2 million.

[DonFerrari]

wombat123 said:

DonFerrari said:

But you assume that AAA game throw a lot of money at the games because they know the game are bad and so they need to cover it in big cost adding voice acting and other elements. And that since Nintendo games are so good they don't need to expend much.

From a consumer perspective I would actually be ofended by nintendo putting 20M effort in a game and generating 1B in revenue. Because they either are making a subpar product (which usually isn't the case) or the shouldn't be selling it for 60 bucks but perhaps 20 that would be more close to the invested money and break even point for units. As a consumer I don't like a company having my money for a 80% profit margin. 10% is more than enough.

So the companies I support, they better invest in the product I want to buy or reinvest on the company to make it even better instead of taking all that profit to their pocket. Like a lot of people complain about Nintendo not being able to put enough games... if they use so little money and are so good at managing the projects and have so much money stoved, why they don't invest in more studios, more games being output, etc? I would say that is pure greedy and against my best interest as customer.

And before you question, most of my games I wait to buy bellow 20-30 bucks unless I see that the money I'm putting were to good use by the dev in making a good game or preparing for even better ones.

No, I assume that a lot AAA companies to do it if they know their game is derivitive as a safety net to ensure that their game sells.   (I had something here about review embargos but I am going to assume Nintendo also does them).  As as example, there are rumors that Nintendo is seen as company that just gives their games to game reviewers without strings attached or threats to remove ad revenue if they don't play ball like a lot of AAA companies are rumored to do.  As for how much a company pours into a game, I don't care as long as I'm having fun and I get my money's worth. If a game makes 1B in revenue with only a 20m investment, it just means that they goddamn know what the hell they're doing or they got really lucky. 

In the case of development costs determining the cost of a game; I see that more as a publisher decision.  If the market doesn't agree with the publisher's opinion that their game is worth 60 bucks then no one is going to buy it until it's discounted.   If people are willing to spend 60 bucks on a small budget game, then that means it must be a good game and if you're not willing to spend that kind of money, then buy it used, wait for a sale or don't buy it.  As for me, I'm not going to begrudge a developer because they were inventive and smart enough to come up with a low budget game idea that millions people were willing to spend the same amount on as a game with a 150m budget.

As for what companies do with their profits; that's their business.  I'd personally agree with you in that I'd love for Nintendo to double their internal development staff with their Wii money, but it's not my money: it's theirs.  But just like it's their business, they'll have to deal with the consequences if they make the wrong decision with those profits just like any other company -- like Nintendo did with the Wii U.

What you buy and how much you pay for it is your business.

You know how much sense would make to think ... well this game development cost 20M, but it's a little generic and probably would sell only 1M (having like 10M profit, or 50% over the investiment) so let's toss 100M at it and expect to sell at least 5M to break even make? Makes zero sense, so it's just your opinion that the game is derivative and they tossed money at it to cover it. ok.

Value and cost are two different things with not much of a connection. But expecting to find it normal that a game costing 2% of the revenue they are making as acceptable as a customer is quite crazy.

And you know why I'm certain it's crazy? Because about every customer complain about things being too expensive and the company is only getting 3-10% margin, so I'm pretty sure it's senseless to say 80% margin is reasonable.

No it isn't their money. It's your money that you gave then for their product. If you as customer think they should be doing things different than you shouldn't be giving they your money or you are only enforcing what they are doing. It's the endless cicle in videogames, gamers complain at what a company is doing or about a game but end buying it anyway. Do you think the company is going to care about the complains? Hell no.