Nintendo Games Need To Sell 2 Million On Average To Be Profitable

[DivinePaladin]

outlawauron said:

DivinePaladin said:
You have to consider by "average game" he's surely referring to the big budget titles here. Clearly something like Toad, HW, the Zelda remakes, or Splatoon don't need to kill to perform well. But something like Galaxy or mainline Zelda, with years in the pipeline and large teams, have to sell that, and always do. The only recent one I think would have missed the mark is Xenoblade X. And possibly DKCTF depending on the budget for that one.

Splatoon's budget was huge though. Nintendo has spent so much money on marketing for the game alone, it's probably 2x the amount paid out during development.

Even with a marketing budget that tripled the overall budget Splatoon likely didn't need 2 million. Or perhaps more fittingly put, Nintendo knew before it shelled out for marketing that the game was going to perform well, so it doubled down. Not that that detracts from your point or anything of course. 

 

Splatoon had such a paltry development budget even after all the extra maps and such are accounted for, people are starting to forget that. Remember this was a game that was claimed to sell as well as W101 because of how little content it had.