| Shatts said: Bayonetta was never big, always niche probs barely making profits, it had its struggles and she's trying to make it worse. How does that help. Do you think Platinum Games is profiting huge from this like she claims? Or Nintendo? Sega? No, and it's very possible that they're even losing money with this franchise. And that's the reality. |
The bolded describes the status of the franchise 10 years ago when Sega was the publisher, definitely not today.
Bayonetta isn't a Pokemon or a Mario, but it is still a decently known IP and franchise amongst an industry that is no longer very niche.
Profits are likely fine given that Bayonetta 2 has never dropped below $45 new and has sold about 2 million copies together on Wii U and Switch. With an estimated budget of $10 to $15 million dollars (maybe add a few million more for the port work) that leaves a ROI of probably 2-3 times after paying the merchants, with Nintendo getting the bulk of it but probably also Sega getting significant royalty fees for leasing the IP to Nintendo.
A company making tens of millions of profit on a game can afford a few thousand dollars to make sure their VA staff is content. Nintendo has always been stingy about VA budgets though. It's the original reason why most of their games didn't even have it until recently, and where they do have it there isn't much dialogue. It's literally shaped their internal game development philosophy. It wouldn't be surprising to me if Nintendo told Platinum this is your budget, Platinum tried to short Hellena, when she refused there was a mini-crisis Nintendo increased the budget significantly and then they were able to hire Jennifer with the larger budget. The fact that they're paying Jennifer obviously a higher fee, implies they could easily have paid Hellena that in the first place. But like with most companies during the pandemic they thought they could get away with lowballing it.
Last edited by sc94597 - on 16 October 2022
