Diablo III took 9 months to port to Nintendo Switch

[zorg1000]

DonFerrari said:

zorg1000 said:

Nothing i said implies they are going for just breaking even, i said the break even point would be 2/3 of PS4 and since the PS4 version did significantly more than just break even, it does not need to sell 2/3 as much to be profitable.

 

I absolutely do not think the Switch version will sell 1.8 million or be as profitable as the PS4 version and i highly doubt Blizzard expects that either.

at 2M cost to make and about 20USD (could even be less) profit per copy it woul need 500k sales to break even (which is feasible) but it isn't just about breaking even and if you have a project that gives you a much better ROI than this then dev would be going there. This is what needs to be understood when preaching pubs hate Nintendo, they actually love money.

routsounmanman said:

You're generalising though. Sure, there are some Nintendo / Switch fans that might actually say and think like that, but that's far from the norm. Besides, your original words "Yes, so much for how easy is to port for Switch, most friendly platform ever and that devs not doing it are morons", are borderline flaming, if not at least provocative.

Generalizing? Go back to other answers and see this was already replied. When I say some or several Nintendo fans do or say something I'm not saying all or anything similar, you are the one understanding it this way to play a "DonFerrari have an agenda against Nintendo and its fan". When you yourself admit that you know there are some fans that do it, then criticizing that behavior is not criticizing the whole of Nintendo fans or lying.

Not provocative, it's a counter against people claiming devs are moron for not doing it, that it is super cheap and easy, they are losing money, hate Nintendo, etc. The most probable reason for Octopath Traveller and Monster Hunter Ultimate not going to PS4 or X1 is the cost to port and projected sales not being enough to justify it, no need to pitch forks.

Helloplite said:

Why is this even a discussion? Don't people here know how long porting a game takes? 9 months with 8-9 core staff is a reasonable amount of time - short even. It implies a porting budget of aprox half to 1 million USD. Including marketing, overall costs could increase further, but this is par for the course for a port really. Do people think you throw in your code, re-compile it and voila?

 

People are seriously lacking understanding of the process and costs of game development.

Seems like it was 10 Blizzard plus a company they hired (which we guessed and could be severely wrong up or bellow) totalling 30 people on 9 months, or about 2M cost to port, which isn't expensive but still need 500k sales just to break even.

You're math is way off.

If the port costs $2 million and they get $20 per unit, it needs to sell 100k to break even not 500k.