AAA money

[caffeinade]

SuperNova said:

elazz said:

You are forgetting one thing here. Sony is the publisher so there is no publisher cut. They developed and published the game. Sony owns Guerilla so they are funding development and marketing. 

So the actual calculation is as following: total amount - retail - distribution

So out of 60 dollars average price (not taking into account other currencies) we have about 2.5m retail copies at that price (60-15-5) = 100m and then an average of 900K digital at 60 dollars = 54m which brings us a total of 154m revenue for Sony on Horizon. Then we have probably another million at an average price of 30 dollars and taking into account special and collector's it's safe to say the revenue for the game by now is hitting 200m almost --> with that development is paid, marketing is paid and also other costs looking into worldwide studios, sony corp etc. but it already made a good profit and will do so till the end of the year. 

Selling 5m copies within a year is succesful for most AAA games. Then you have those from EA, Activision, Rockstar etc. that need to do 10m 

But then you have the AAA league that needs smaller sales since the budgets were smaller. Like 1 up to 2 million

You're right of course, only I did not forget that, but deliberately ignored it, because we happen to have quite detailed numbers for HDZ, but not for others. HDZ already made sony their money back and then some, but I was trying to give an example that would also fit for a third party publisher, so I included the licensing fees in the calculation. My point was to show that 40$ for the first 3M is not an unfair average, for a game wih similar quality and marketing budget.

Also, yes HDZ is quite successfull of course, but even less successfull games with a similar kind of development and marketing budget will make their money back with gamesales alone as long as they break 3M+ LT, wich is not that unusal. Shadow of Mordor for example, whose sequel is hotly debated in the Lootbox, microtransaction, DLC in 60$ games mess sold 5.9M ww across all platforms.

Shadow of Mordor:
PS4 3.08
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

XOne 1.38
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

PS3 0.57
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

X360 0.49
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Steam 3.68 (as of the 5th of July 2017, the data is unreliable after that point)
http://steamspy.com/app/241930

The game sold over 9.2 million on all platforms.