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potato_hamster on 01 March 2018
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VAMatt said:
potato_hamster said:

No. Konami turned a handsome profit on every single one of Kojima's projects as far as I know. MGSV (the game that got him fired) likely made its development costs back in its first week on sale. It sold a total of over 6 million copies not including the definitive edition released last year. Apparently the development cost was $80m. Conservatively assuming they made $25 per copy sold, that's a $70M profit. Even more if that $80 million development cost included Ground Zeroes.

A few yeara ago, there was a change in Konami's leadership, and one of the new heads was far more profit driven than his predecessors. He was unwilling to give Kojima the time to make the games the way Kojima saw fit, and the relationship between Konami and Kojima crumbled to a point where they made his work life a living hell and forced a release date on him, forcing him to release an unfinished game in MGS V. He then was fired after the project was finished, and left to join Sony,  who will gladly give Kojima everything he wanted from a publisher, and in return get great exclusives that are pretty much guaranteed to make a profit.  He'll probably never leave.

No pub makes anywhere near $25 average per game over the course of its lifetime.  They're only in that ballpark at the very beginning of a game's life.  A year later most games are selling for $30 or so, maybe $40 if its a big hit.  After royalties are paid to the platform holder, the retailer gets a cut, distribution costs, and the actual costs to make the physical product, the pub is making much less - more like $10.  Then, at year two, when games sell for $20, they're making pennies.  

Yeah, but the vast majority of MGS V's sales came within the first two months when it was selling for no less than $50. Most publishers make about $30 from a $60 game, and yes it decreases as time goes down, that's why I put it at $25. But even if their average return was $15 a copy, that still nets Konami a handsome $10M profit, and that's not counting the sales of Ground Zeroes (over 3 million copies itself), or the profits on the multi-player micro transactions, even though the $80 million budget for MGSV includes the development cost of both Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain.

This game easily made many, many millions. As far as I know, every game Kojima ever put his name on has made its money back and then some.