Diablo III took 9 months to port to Nintendo Switch

[DonFerrari]

zorg1000 said:

DonFerrari said:

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.

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.

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.

You are right, my math was off. for a game like this 300k sales on Switch is easy thing and the profit is certainly enough to justify the cost (since they used third party to do most of the port instead of themselves so they didn't had much cost of opportunity).

Alby_da_Wolf said:
If the port cost 2M and took some time, we can say it's easy enough, but not as easy as just recompiling and testing it. We can also say that for a company like Blizzard it's an investment that despite likely moderately profitable, it has some qualities and possible further benefits, low risk, relatively low cost and possible good marketing value for at least two reasons, showing with facts they are willing to support the platform and porting a game that despite quite old now, is still one of the most successful action RPGs ever, loved by reviewers and even more by gamers. If many NS gamers will like it, there will be another benefit, showing the longevity of Blizzard games, a thing well known by PC gamers, less by PS and XB gamers and possibly unknown for Ninty-only gamers (there were previous Blizzard games also on consoles, like Lost Vikings, but Diablo III is the first really big Blizzard game ever ported to consoles).

Yep, 2M and 9 months isn't super easy and cheap, but for a game that can sell as much as Diablo it is justifiable investment.