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Forums - Sales Discussion - Heavenly Sword sold about 1.5m but devs didn't break even

jarrod on 30 March 2010
Deviation59 said:
jarrod said:
letsdance said:
jarrod said:
leo-j said:
that's really sad..

the game is 5 hours, and the budget was higher than MGS4s potentially.

Very sad

Eh, more than twice as many people worked on MGS4, and it was in development twice as long... pretty sure it's budget likely dwarfed Heavenly Sword's.


I doubt it. I think Kojima went the more traditional way in developing the MGS4. Ninjatheory was very ambitious in their developing with facial mocap and voicing famous people.

Uh, you know MGS4 used far, far more extensive mocap (including facial capture) than HS, right?  Just check the credits, MGS4's mocap credits alone rival the entire R&D teams for many other games.  MGS4 also had a huge voice cast, extensive CG and the entire network infrastructure R&D for MGO in there.  If you credit check, MGS4 credits almost 400 people!  

And that's just production, we're not even talking about promotional budgets...

Extensive CG? Don't you know that all four of the Metal Gear Solid games eschew traditional CG entirely? Their cinematics are all done in engine and with in-game assets.

Sorry, I just meant cinemas, I know they're done with gameplay assets.  I said CG because that's how the actual credits credit the director, their term, not mine.



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Attoyou on 30 March 2010

I Don't Know Why, but i loved Heavenly Sword, GREAT game! im Surprised a lot of People did Not Like it.  to bad they did not make some profit on it.



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SickleSigh on 30 March 2010

I hope they didn't expect to sell more then 1.5m copies in 07 being exclusive to Ps3. If you need more then 1.5m copies to break even on a console that had a userbase of less then 10m then thats sad. They shouldn't have had such high budget for the game. It was a fun game but I didn't like the combat system or the horrible sixaxis controls. I returned it after It made me play as Kai.



twesterm on 30 March 2010
letsdance said:
Kasz216 said:
letsdance said:
Kasz216 said:
I mean think about it. Why would they bother paying him to motion cap the character if it was going to cost them tons of money. Nobody knows a thing about his face.

They could of literally got anybody to do it. Your taking all of these jobs that are low paying and would be for him, and trying to turn it into millions. It just doesn't work like that I don't know what else to say.


Because he was the director... what part of this do you not understand? It's not like they called him in just for the motion capture. The guy spent months (Maybe a couple years) of his time on this project. He had major roles in its creation. The budget was extremly high. You don't think the guy got paid a good deal of money? I bet the programers made a few million each too.

You... seriously think... the programmers made a few million each.

I think we can properly end this conversation now.  Because I realize it's not so much an arguement of amount, but an argument of scale.

I'm just going to take a step back, and float these ideas out to someone who works in the videogame industry.


Well, probablly not since they didn't get a bonus from the game since they didn't make a profit but each developer probablly made around 500k for the 4 years they worked on it.



 

Mr Puggsly on 30 March 2010
Viper1 said:
Mr Puggsly said:
Viper1 said:
Mr Puggsly said:
Gojimaster said:
i bet these kind of stories are very common on hd systems, and we don't hear about half of them-- that is crazy a game can sell 1.5 mill and make a profit

I think these stories are common on the Wii as well. That would explain why developers often ignore the Wii for quality releases.

To my knowledge only 1 developer has lost money on Wii to the point it required them to shut down.  There are several such cases on the HD side of things.

Average break even point for a Wii title is ~300k units.  Average break even point for an HD title is over 1 million units. 

Don't forget that publishers typically fund the development from the start.  A lot of these studios that went under started the projects with their own money and then pitched them to publishers and failed to generate enough revenue to recoup their initial development costs.  Ninja Theory is alsow one of those developers who began the project prior to the publisher (Sony) getting involved.

That's because HD consoles tend to games of a higher caliber. The typical HD game is much higher quality than the typical Wii game.

Its not hard to believe the average Wii game only need to sell 300K, because the average Wii game is low budget or shovelware. I'm sure games like Dead Space Extraction, CoD, Dead Rising, No More Heroes, Conduit, and Resident Evil need to sell more than 300K.

Dead Rising, No More Heroes, the CoD's, The Conduit and the RE games made profit according to their publishers.   I think DS: Extraction is the only one that's still working toward it.

Development time, staff volume and other factors are what determine production costs.  Even the bigger Wii titles do not requie the same number of programmers, artists, etc...or the same volume of development time as the average HD title does.

I didn't say they bombed. I'm just saying they probably needed to sell more than the typical Wii game. But frankly, they are still low quality and budget titles compared to the typical HD game.

You say the bigger Wii titles don't require the same number of staff (i.e. money). But where are the Wii games that are at par with Gears of War, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Halo, Killzone, Assassin's Creed, etc. Graphics aside, not as much effort is put into 3rd party Wii games. Look at the last gen, PS2 and Xbox 3rd party games had a lot more effort put into them as well so its not just a matter of graphics.



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Lostplanet22 on 30 March 2010

Oh got what a tunnelquoting in this thread X_X.



 

Notorius.A.i.G on 30 March 2010

Ouch ....



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letsdance on 31 March 2010

So guys... who know everything. Where did the money go?

Ninja Theory was a team of 23 in '04. They ended up with a 6 hour game. The cost is probablly close to double Uncharted's budget... so... your telling me voicing only cost a couple grand... the length is well below average... everything else is decent... yet it has a massive budget. I guess managent is putting their coke and prostitutes under the development cost eh?

I'm sorry. I stand by the voicing for this game has taken up more than its fair share of the budget. Its the only thing different than other games yet has a higher cost.



Kasz216 on 31 March 2010
letsdance said:
So guys... who know everything. Where did the money go?

Ninja Theory was a team of 23 in '04. They ended up with a 6 hour game. The cost is probablly close to double Uncharted's budget... so... your telling me voicing only cost a couple grand... the length is well below average... everything else is decent... yet it has a massive budget. I guess managent is putting their coke and prostitutes under the development cost eh?

I'm sorry. I stand by the voicing for this game has taken up more than its fair share of the budget. Its the only thing different than other games yet has a higher cost.

Viper and Twesterm actually work in the games Industry.  You know this right?  The Lol was just in direct response to your "The developers probably made a couple million each." if you didn't know.

You can maintain your position, but at this point... unless the actual people from Ninja Theory back you up.  Your on shakey ground.



letsdance on 31 March 2010
Kasz216 said:
letsdance said:
So guys... who know everything. Where did the money go?

Ninja Theory was a team of 23 in '04. They ended up with a 6 hour game. The cost is probablly close to double Uncharted's budget... so... your telling me voicing only cost a couple grand... the length is well below average... everything else is decent... yet it has a massive budget. I guess managent is putting their coke and prostitutes under the development cost eh?

I'm sorry. I stand by the voicing for this game has taken up more than its fair share of the budget. Its the only thing different than other games yet has a higher cost.

Viper and Twesterm actually work in the games Industry.  You know this right?  The Lol was just in direct response to your "The developers probably made a couple million each." if you didn't know.

You can maintain your position, but at this point... unless the actual people from Ninja Theory back you up.  Your on shakey ground.


Shaky ground? I'm sorry... 30 - 40 million is way too much for even 23 people doing coke for 3 years, They had to spend it on something else. And youre using twest as a expert opinion? Tell me when he works on a game with the budget of HS.