Not quite as much piracy as PC gaming :P and ps3 has yet to have piracy though things look bad for sony at the mo with all this hack stuff ^^

Im not smoking anything, just pasting links that im finding which claim Halo 3 advertising was, 6.5 mil, 10 mil or 40 mil.

ITs you guys that are smoking something as you're not pasting any links to any of your clims and just pulling numbers out of your ass.

MW2 advertising didn't cost 200mil btw. 200 mil was the budget for the whole game including development, disk printing, distribution and advertising/marketting.

Game was 40-50 mil to develop. They printed at least 10 million (if not more) copies of the game across all platforms. Lets say 10 dollars per copy of raw materials for manual, disk and case and shipping (its prolly more)...thats another 100 million. So advertising and marketting was around 50 mil. Not 200 million lol...

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/51534/Modern-Warfare-2-Cost-200-Million-Hidden-Game-Modes-Unlocked-On-PC

I never said that i know Halo 3 advertising nudget, jsut pasting links dude. Links are key

Considering that there are over 300 millions of PC gamers, but piracy seems to be only 4 times bigger than Xbox 360's, I'm pretty sure that PC developers aren't too worried.

lol Are you aspiring to become the new master of spin?

Printing of discs is now included in game budgets? And even if they were (which they obviously aren't because budgets include fixed costs and not cost of materials) it would be nowhere near $10 per game copy.

Again, Im not spinning anything as I am posting links for everything I say. You on the other hand have yet to post a link...

Here we go again

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/51534/Modern-Warfare-2-Cost-200-Million-Hidden-Game-Modes-Unlocked-On-PC

"Call of Duty [Modern Warfare 2] cost $40 million to $50 million to produce, people close to the project said, about as much as a mid-size film"

So the game cost 40-50 million.

Then the article states:

"Including marketing expenses and the cost of producing and distributing discs, the launch budget was $200 million"

Therefore printing and distributing discs isn't included in the games budget according to this source. I'd love to see a link from you that says otherwise.

And as far as cost for making and distributing a game, 10 dollars per game is guess on printing the disc, manual, cost of the case, assembly and shipping of the discs to stores and warehouse. Discs themselves are a dollar to print but the manual and shipping/storage raises the costs. I've looked for this figure for a long time and haven't found anything concrete.

Fell free to post a link which proves me wrong.

So you just made those $10 per game copy up? It's just your estimation.

What if it's just $3 per copy and they printed 8 million copies for the launch? That's only $24 million.

Pachter says printing a disc is 70 cent. http://www.gametrailers.com/video/christmas-special-pach-attack/708763  (at around 2 minutes) Conclusion: the whole package including shipping can't be many Dollars more.

So take $200 million and subtract $50 million (game development) and $24 (printing and shipping discs & package) and you get $126 million for marketing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

Halo 3 was marketed in the same ballpark, thus it's over $50 million easily.

Let my draw out the thriumph card though (since you put so much faith in links lol):

 "While the $55 million spent on making Halo 3 pales into insignificance compared to the $200 million Microsoft reportedly spent on marketing the game."

http://gamer.blorge.com/2010/02/25/top-10-video-game-budgets-of-all-time/

That is the only link which cites halo marketting budget at 200 million and frankly the source isn't very credible. Thats the same link that Kotaku used as a source...again, no real proof or logic.

I've posted links from Joystiq and CBS claiming that total cost for Halo 3 including advertising was around 40-60 million. Also, bungie members have stated on Bungie boards that the game cost 30-40 million to make, so that article is even wrong with the $55 million dollar budget. Wrong wrong wrong...

Not to mention that 200 million advertising on Halo  doesn't add up because of the fact Microsofts marketting budget as a whole company was 800 million. Im sure 1/4 of that went on Halo.

As far as disc printing and shipping and all that stuff, all we have is estimations. I know that disc printing is cheap but packaging and shipping is more than you think. Activision had to ship 3 versions of the game (3 different manuals and boxes all those different versions like the prestige edition) to 1000s of retailers across the world. That definetly costs a pretty penny. Not to mention that they sold over 10 million copies of the game across all platforms in a month where halo 3 sold around 5 on xbox only. All that most likely has to be accounted for in the launch budget...

Do you mean that company with $60 billion in yearly revenue would put only $800 million per year on marketing? Stop joking please. And if you read it somewhere in their annual reports, you interpreted it wrong.

Anyway, I don't believe Halo 3 to have had a $200 mill marketing budget and even $100 mill is far too much when I think about it. Calculated revenue for a Halo game (from Microsoft's perspective in 2007 before release) would have been roughly 10 million copies times $20 per copy = $200 mill, so a sane publisher wouldn't spend half of that on just marketing, no way.

So $50 mill (or less) is reasonable in my opinion. I'm just thinking out loud here now and rambling.

They seem to have reported a $200 million budget in advertisement (which doesn't seem farfetched, since Master Chief was all over the place, all over the world) but no doubt they meant to pull as many people as possible into buying Xbox 360s.

Even if they had lost money on Halo 3, they would still get humongous amount of new Xbox 360 costumers which probably bought the Gold membership right after, and we also know that Microsoft can afford to lose money to push their business.