i know you were talking about the GT5 and not GT5P only

why the hell are you even talking about the GT5P costs as it was a part of gt5

and yesd how the hell is it most likely that they didn't cover GT5 costs??????

hwo is it unneccesary and how are they wasting it????????????????????????????????????????????

its like saying we shouldn't spend money on visual effects in movies and just go on making golden age movies?

same thing why spend so much money of halo,gta4 to make it big andnot just do a short version of them??????

you are seriously fucked up

I didn't put words into your mouth, thus the question mark.  I just don't understand what you're saying.  You started off by saying that you didn't want GT5 to sell and turn a profit.  So you want Sony to lose money?  But the reason for that is that you don't like Sony wasting money in the graphical department.  So you care about Sony's money?  You make no sense at all dude.

Stop getting so angry guys.

@rakugakist

I want it not to profit to show them that using too much money for graphics is a bad thing.

@Solidsnake

Calm down.

@Rpruett

Every single detail that can be improved does NOT make it a better simulator.

Great graphics improve a simulator. Perfect gfx don't improve it any more than incredible ones.

They are fine-tuning everything which is just a waste when most of it will go unnoticed in-game.

I can't see any way in which the dev costs haven't already been recupperated.  They have to be taking close to $15 for each copy of Prologue sold (some have sold at discount, but then digital sales have much higher margins than retail sales) which means clsoe to $75 million taken in.  Even if it were $12 a copy, that's the $60 million dev budget which they cannot lie about.  Since ads are probably paid for already, they aren't at a profit yet, but they won't take long at all.  First week's sales will be enough to cover the rest of the gap.

@dtewi , it isn't just about the graphics sure they will be great it is about content , physics and the fact that when you play the game you become immersed and the fact that the game is fairly unique among games in that Yamauchi is a car fanatic and perfectionist , traits that in the case of GT have made it a billion dollar franchise, the game is pushed as much if not more towards the  enthusiast as  it is gamers.

@dtewi

They are simply perfectionists, GT5 is their labour of love, they wanted it perfected to perfection!

And I have no doubt SONY gave them a "Do what you want" signal after GT5 Prologue sold absurdly well for what it was.

Budget wasn't really a problem to them, so they didn't think like that.

Now would I have preferred GT5 to be out 1 year ago and maybe have 5% less polish and 5% less graphical power...HELL YES

But Polyphony Digital doesn't think like that, understand the core values of the company.

@Solid_Snake 4RD

Leave dtewi alone!

Calm down!

If we assume they've made an average of $15 for each copy sold, they've made $74.25M already. The game sure has been very expensive but so is $74M a huge sum of money, much more than most games cost. I wouldn't be surprised if the budget was like $100M or even more but they're definitely going to make money in the end if they haven't already. They've probably made more money than just $15 per copy. $20 would put the profits at around $100M already.

Also, Prologue I believe, was mostly developed using assets they were going to use in the full game anyway so that one can't have cost them a lot. And if it did, we can probably deduct that amount from GT5's budget.

And before you come screaming how many of those copies were sold at discount, I doubt it was Sony that discounted them (mostly at least). It must have been retailers, no?

They probably have made profit on GT5..

5 million is a huge figure.. and GT4 has sold another 200K, in addition to GT PSP selling near 2 million, so that just adds to the equation

Problem with using fuzzy math in this case, is that GT5P was heavily bundled, and likely drove a signifant amount of units being essentially $0.   

The only region we have any real insight into stand alone versus bundled sales is Japan... and there, GT5P did about 60% of it's ltd as a free pack in...

so know its fuzzy maths versus fuzzy bundles estimates.