...how much do gaming companies get per copy of game sold? Like let's say a 50 dollar Wii game is sold. How much of that 50 dollars makes it back to the company?

To simplify things, let's assume the game is published & developed by the same company.

My guess about 60% of retail value.

I think half goes to the publisher, then from their they pay off their royalties to the developer, and console owner. Then pay off any licensing, contractor, ad agency etc. It gets spread pretty thin unless the developer owns their IP and publishes their own game.

If the developer and publisher are the same, the profit margin is pretty good. There is only shipping and manufacturing costs, since marketing is part of the publisher. 60% is a pretty good guess, because I can see gamestores taking 30-35% and shipping/manufacturing taking the rest.

If the developer and publisher are different then the numbers can skew. Most of the time the publisher pays the costs to get a developer's game out to market. All profits are given to the publisher until the costs are paid off. Then the developer and publisher split the profits, usually with the developers getting the bigger split.

If a game sells in retail for £40 then the store bought it for £20 which means that there is atleast 50% profit so 60% is quite accurate.

As a rule of thumb, approx half, like others said.

yeah 60% of the retail price sounds reasonable

I know it's two different Markets but going with Comics. I'd say 50-60%. Course in Comics it works to the retailers advantage where this would work to the Developers advantage.

Depends on system.

On a Wii, of the $50 that a game is sold for "roughly" $30 will make it back to the company ($10 to retailers, $10 to Nintendo).

On a PS3, of the $60 that a game is sold for, "roughly" $37.50 will make it back to the company ($12.50 to retailers, $10 to Sony).

On a Xbox 360, of the $60 that a game is sold for, "roughly" $42.50 will make it back to the company ($12.50 to retailers, $5 to MS).