People Worrying about Nintendo when they should be worrying about Microsoft [Opinion]

[Barozi]

potato_hamster said:

Alkibiádēs said:

Most of the Wii U sales will have been first party though, Microsoft only receives royalties from third party sales, not the full $50-60.

Actually, the publisher gets less than $15 for a full $60 title. The platform owner only gets a$1 or two last I checked. Distrubutors get a cut. Stores get a cut, then there's production and shipping shipping costs. That eats up over $40 of a $60 game (the percentages change when the game retails for less than $60). When a first party publishes their own game, they get like $16 max per copy, as opposed to the $1 or so they get for third party.

Then there's second party games (like Pokemon) where Nintendo publishes the game, and owns control of the IP, but an independent studio makes the game. The royalty for that game could mean that Nintendo might only make $2-3 per copy of Pokemon sold rather than the $15 or so they'd get if they made it themselves. This came up when Pokemon Go came up, and people were discussing Nintendo's profits from that. It's actually remarkably similar for all Pokemon games for similar reasons.

and what source did you check? Because that's quite a bit different than this good ol' pie chart:


Then there's the online stores, where platform owners get ~30% of every third party sale and 100% for their own stuff.