It sold over one million world wide. With all the marketing and development do you think the game made a profit? Also what were the costs to make this game?

Heavy Rain sells one million worldwide

by Andrew Yoon 

No one was exactly sure if Sony's gamble with Heavy Rain would pay off. With no aliens, no stealth kills, and no epic boss battles, the game strayed so far from the mainstream norm that some wondered if it could possibly succeed. Considering the incredible technical effort Heavy Rain represented, it's clear that this was also an expensive experiment for both Sony and Quantic Dream to take on.

After seven weeks of release, Heavy Rain has managed to sell through a million units worldwide, according to an announcement on the PlayStation.Blog. No specifics are offered, but we'll deduce that Europe represents the largest piece of the sales pie; Heavy Rain was completely sold out in that part of the world.

It's unclear if a million units sold is enough for Quantic Dream and Sony to break even on Heavy Rain's lengthy development. Undoubtedly, the game will continue selling through the year, which has us hopeful that the industry will be unafraid to invest in another game like it in the future.

I hope so, just beat it this morning.

Great game!!!

I've gotta think it did. According to Pachter $12 from each $60 sale goes to the retailer, $12 goes to the console manufacturer and $36 goes to the publisher. That means Sony gets $48 per game sale of Heavy Rain. So Sony has probably made ~$50 million in revenue so far which should fairly easily cover the costs.

If they haven't broken even yet it would be one of the most expensive games ever.

I hope so. I finished it yesterday and it was a excellent game. Now I'm gonna try to platinum it.

If it doesn't it'll be a big big shame on gamers.

But it definetely will as people are loving it, the game will have legs.

Why would it be a shame on gamers? If it is a shame on anyone it would be the makers. For (A) not making it worth buying for enough people so it makes money, or (B) Bad money management

1 million without bundle at full price?

I believe so, the game will continue to sell to months to come, I wouldn't be worried about it.

Considering it looked like both Cage and Sony were going ape-shit over the sales. I'd say it did as soon as it passed 500k. Don't let the Heavenly Sword fiasco fool you, most HD games now don't need to sell over a Million to make profit. It also should be noted that if MGS4, which Im sure had a bigger budget and bigger marketing campaign, managed to make profit from the first 1M then Heavy Rain should require much much less

QD previous game of this same genre, Fahrenheit, sold 800k lifetime (so including also budget editions) across more than only one platform (so adding costs to port it) and its results made developers and publishers find appealing to evolve the genre with a new game, only on one platform too, so it looks reasonable to think that 1M on only one platform and sold at full price should at least compensate the bigger costs of development on current HD consoles and make it break even.