By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

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

letsdance on 29 March 2010
Severance said:
letsdance said:
Kasz216 said:
In fact... to prove my point...

http://news.filefront.com/actors-get-fat-paychecks-for-video-game-voice-work/

Note how there "fat paychecks" are half a million... and this is dealing with Patrick Stewart... a MUCH bigger name then Andy. Much more distinct voice as well.


"lend" =/= Play lead role. Sorry it doesnt support you at all

the lead role in this game is a woman >_>;


lol. The lead villian then.



Around the Network
Jereel Hunter on 29 March 2010
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

Well, early PS3 developers were hit hard - being hard to program for, those who opted to go for very nice looking launch titles had to spend a lot on them... a dev could probably make heavenly sword for a lot less now that there are better tools and more experience with the hardware.



Severance on 29 March 2010
Alceste007 said:
Severance said:
urameshixr said:
no suprise..


this game not have not special and is average at best.

wha? its one of the best Hack and Slash games. the characters are just amazing.

Yeah, Heavenly Sword was alot of fun for me as well. My main complaint was the good was very short.

it is, and the ending also.

Offtopic :

so if Heavenly Sword IP is owned by Sony , i hope they don't F up the story and make it God Of War like , since its not going to be made by Ninja theory.

but potiental sequel or rather prequel would be about the former warrior that had the sword, but it still wouldn't be fun without a woman as the lead, i really loved Nariko and Kai.



I live for the burn...and the sting of pleasure...
I live for the sword, the steel, and the gun...

- Wasteland - The Mission.

jarrod on 29 March 2010
letsdance said:
jarrod said:
letsdance said:
Kasz216 said:
letsdance said:
Kasz216 said:
letsdance said:
jarrod said:
letsdance 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...

They didn't have andy serkis. All those voice actors probablly got a couple of grand with the Snake maybe getting 100k. Niko in GTA4 only got 100k. I bet andy got a few million.

Andy who?

Sorry, just pour through the credits yourself (MGS4, Heavenly Sword).  There's pretty much no way HS was a higher cost production than MGS4...


Andy alone probably got paid as much as all of MSG4s entire cast.

I think you overestimate the cost of high level voice acting.  I mean, Mike Myers got 10 million for Shrek 2.  That's a movie, I'd be surprised if anyone in a videogame makes more then 500K VA.


A movie that was shorter than HS along with the fact that no game has had a VA who is as well known as "MY PRECIOUS" ontop of the fact that it just wasnt in the sound studio he also had to act it out. Unlike Mike. I bet Andy put more time in HS than mike in Shrek. I bet if a game studio was like "Hey mike we got a job for you. We want you to spend a year or two of your life in a sound studio and motion capture and we'll give you 500k" he'd say "fuck off I'm gonna make another shrek for 20 times that"

Jobs aren't paid based on how hard the work is.  Jobs are paid by how valuable the work is.

Mike Myers work in Shrek 2 was way more valuable then Andy's in HS.

Shrek 2 had a budget of 150 million.   It made just short of a billion... just in theatres.  Not counting DVDs, Merchandising etc..

 

Heavenly sword made what... 90 million... of which... they didn't even see 30% of that money?

You think they spend 30 million on 2 voice actors?  What kinda sales do you think they expected?


LOL way to pull a figure out of your ass and into my mouth.

BTW this is for Jarrod "The hobbit actors, Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan received bonuses of between 430,000 and 560,000 per film. Bernard Hill and Ian McKellen earned 312,000 per film, with Liv Tyler making a little less."

I'd say it was very likely Smeagol got paid more than Liv.  So... Thats near 900k in just bonus'

Can you cite that ?  Because in his tell-all-book, Sean Astin complained about getting paid only $250,000 for the entire trilogy.


Sean Astin was a no name before the films. His role wasn't very important either(Not like frodo or gandalf). They could have casted anyone for it. He was the dummy that accepted a 83k a movie contract. I'm sure he probablly could have negotiated better pay. Especially since the movies had over 100 million budget per title.

Heres the source The London Daily Mail (5 December 2003)

Sam's character was the 2nd most important Hobbit in the films after Frodo.  If not for Sam, they'd have lost to Sauron (lol!). He's one of the central characters, up there with Smeagol, Gandalf, Strider, etc.

Sean Astin was in The Goonies.  That makes him a bigger pre-LOTR name than Andy Serkis, and I'd argue he's probably bigger post-LOTR name too given the general public can actually recognize him... $250k for 2 years work, for a lead role in a $100m+ trilogy is pretty shameful, but we really don't know how anyone was paid given Sean's the only one who went on record with it.  

Also, the Daily Mail is a tabloid.  Have a more reputable source?



letsdance on 29 March 2010
ShadowSoldier said:
Wow....didn't even break even? I think it was one of a few factors.

1) A bad deal from Sony
2) Bad management of funds

I think multiplat is the way to go for these devs


They already had the code and if they developed HS2 they would have where they were going set in stone. I'm sure they could have reduced costs drastically on the second one if they decided to do it. Also the ps3 has more than tripled its user base. It really just depends how their next game goes to know if it was a good idea or not



Around the Network
Mr Puggsly on 29 March 2010
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.



Recently Completed: 
River City: Rival Showdown for 3DS (3/5) - River City: Tokyo Rumble for 3DS (4/5) - Zelda: BotW for Wii U (5/5) - Zelda: BotW for Switch (5/5) - Zelda: Link's Awakening for Switch (4/5) - Rage 2 for X1X (4/5) - Rage for 360 (3/5) - Streets of Rage 4 for X1/PC (4/5) - Gears 5 for X1X (5/5) - Mortal Kombat 11 for X1X (5/5) - Doom 64 for N64 (emulator) (3/5) - Crackdown 3 for X1S/X1X (4/5) - Infinity Blade III - for iPad 4 (3/5) - Infinity Blade II - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Infinity Blade - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Wolfenstein: The Old Blood for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Origins for X1 (3/5) - Uncharted: Lost Legacy for PS4 (4/5) - EA UFC 3 for X1 (4/5) - Doom for X1 (4/5) - Titanfall 2 for X1 (4/5) - Super Mario 3D World for Wii U (4/5) - South Park: The Stick of Truth for X1 BC (4/5) - Call of Duty: WWII for X1 (4/5) -Wolfenstein II for X1 - (4/5) - Dead or Alive: Dimensions for 3DS (4/5) - Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite for X1 (3/5) - Halo Wars 2 for X1/PC (4/5) - Halo Wars: DE for X1 (4/5) - Tekken 7 for X1 (4/5) - Injustice 2 for X1 (4/5) - Yakuza 5 for PS3 (3/5) - Battlefield 1 (Campaign) for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Syndicate for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: MW Remastered for X1 (4/5) - Donkey Kong Country Returns for 3DS (4/5) - Forza Horizon 3 for X1 (5/5)

jarrod on 29 March 2010
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.

The significant proportional difference between HD focused versus Wii focused devs closing up shop would imply otherwise...



toastboy44562 on 29 March 2010

must of had some bad management



Zuhyc on 29 March 2010

Didn't Sony fund the development? o_O



Mr Puggsly on 29 March 2010
jarrod 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.

The significant proportional difference between HD focused versus Wii focused devs closing up shop would imply otherwise...

Many of those developers were struggling for years. Not being able to make quality games this gen was the final nail.



Recently Completed: 
River City: Rival Showdown for 3DS (3/5) - River City: Tokyo Rumble for 3DS (4/5) - Zelda: BotW for Wii U (5/5) - Zelda: BotW for Switch (5/5) - Zelda: Link's Awakening for Switch (4/5) - Rage 2 for X1X (4/5) - Rage for 360 (3/5) - Streets of Rage 4 for X1/PC (4/5) - Gears 5 for X1X (5/5) - Mortal Kombat 11 for X1X (5/5) - Doom 64 for N64 (emulator) (3/5) - Crackdown 3 for X1S/X1X (4/5) - Infinity Blade III - for iPad 4 (3/5) - Infinity Blade II - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Infinity Blade - for iPad 4 (4/5) - Wolfenstein: The Old Blood for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Origins for X1 (3/5) - Uncharted: Lost Legacy for PS4 (4/5) - EA UFC 3 for X1 (4/5) - Doom for X1 (4/5) - Titanfall 2 for X1 (4/5) - Super Mario 3D World for Wii U (4/5) - South Park: The Stick of Truth for X1 BC (4/5) - Call of Duty: WWII for X1 (4/5) -Wolfenstein II for X1 - (4/5) - Dead or Alive: Dimensions for 3DS (4/5) - Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite for X1 (3/5) - Halo Wars 2 for X1/PC (4/5) - Halo Wars: DE for X1 (4/5) - Tekken 7 for X1 (4/5) - Injustice 2 for X1 (4/5) - Yakuza 5 for PS3 (3/5) - Battlefield 1 (Campaign) for X1 (3/5) - Assassin's Creed: Syndicate for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare for X1 (4/5) - Call of Duty: MW Remastered for X1 (4/5) - Donkey Kong Country Returns for 3DS (4/5) - Forza Horizon 3 for X1 (5/5)