| Nuvendil said: So I see some people trying to calculate total revenue Platinum got from Bayonetta. It's worth noting the actual breakdown of sales, both physical and digital. The breakdown is about this: So Platinum could expect about $27 to $35 per unit sold at $60 depending on returns and other variables. Digital is much better as they only have to pay the platform fee, which for consoles is typically somewhere around $15 ot $20 so they make between $40 to $45 on each sale there. If we assume the first game skewed heavily physical - a wise very good assumption - and a large chunk of games were sold at lower prices, they probably made, on average $20 to $25 a copy, maybe a bit more. Bayonetta 2 held its price better and had a better digital splut but also sold much less. So if we assume a 60/40 physical to digital split - probabaly being generous to digital honestly - that gives them an average of somewhere around $37 a copy (being generous again here). |
That breakdown (which originates from OnLive -- the defunct streaming service with a motivation to skew the estimates) only really applies to third-party games where the developer retains IP rights. It is likely that Nintendo's agreement with Platinum (and Sega) given that Nintendo owns the rights to Bayonetta 2 and 3, is that the bulk of revenue goes to Nintendo and Nintendo will fund the development, with maybe some profit-sharing for Platinum's executives/lead developers and a royalty fee going to Sega.
Bayonetta 2 being a 1st party game means there are no platform fees as Nintendo is the platform licenser who charges the fee. That puts the minimum revenue per sale for a retail Bayonetta 2 game at $34 (assuming the $15 merchant fee, $7 returns, and $4 cost of goods hold true and the full sale price of $60/$50.) A digital title wouldn't have the $15 merchant fee, $7 returns, and far lower than $4 cost of goods (basically the per download maintenance cost of the servers.) That'd probably mean somewhere around $50 going to Nintendo for a $60 digital sale and mid-$40s going to Nintendo for $50 digital sale, depending on Sega's cut.
Bayonetta 2 sold nearly 2 million on both platforms (1.08 million on Switch, .85 million on Wii U.)
If we assume Nintendo got $45 per digital sale, and $34 per physical sale on average, and the 6:4 distribution you noted that'd give total revenue for Bayo 2 going to Nintendo of about $78 million, likely two-three times the cost of development.
Last edited by sc94597 - on 16 October 2022
