Such a short time here and you already have minions?

Good for you.

I move up the ranks quickly, yes.

When you have a PPD of over 10 people start asking if you're recruiting

Unless you actually own the company that is being successful (or not), Who Cares!?!?

True, however, for these smaller games and new IPs, they will either not be a sequel (Little King's Story) or not get localised (lots of JRPG's), so, for us as the consumer, it is beneficial if the game sells well for the company, as it means we get to play more games from them in the same saga

I'm not going to dispute that FF13 didn't make a profit, regretfully, I believe it has. However, there is some skew in how you're presenting your data.

1. The 5 million shipped per that article is at western launch. This includes replenishment shipments in Japan. However, by this point, the price on FF13 had already plummeted in Japan, meaning that the reships were sold for less. In addition, yes, there was a healthy first shipment in Japan. And yes, S-E can count it as sold. But, just like us buying from a store, unused (or, in the store's case, unsold) items can be returned. Faced with the potential of massive returns, S-E gave retailers a partial credit on their unsold stock to allow them to lower the price. Some were probably still sold at a retailer loss (the infamous receipt showing a new copy of FF13 sold for ¥980), but it is not a given that S-E kept full price on the copies.

2. The article mentions that they needed to sell 1 million day one to "help" with the costs. This does not mean that 1 million is the profit mark; rather, they may have used legs on the series to bring it to profit. Failure to sell a lot early in would put them in a case like I mentioned with the prior paragraph- having to give partial refunds due to an overstuffed channel, which eats into profitability. Selling through the 1 million means they don't have to worry about them being returned.

3. But not all copies are at full price, so it's hard to tell. Even in the US, land of slow-to-drop prices (we start the cheapest for games, but we're also last to see a price drop), FF13 has dropped to a retail of $40, and has had multiple promotions selling it as cheap as $20 new. And there's still the potential liability of unsold retailer copies coming back.

4 (and post). Yes, MS did take up a fair bit of the advertising cost in the west. However, I would guess that the agreement was to share in some of the costs- S-E still had to make the footage for the commercial (since MS doesn't have this data themselves to work with), and, for spinning the game to their system, MS would pay for the airtime. This would save part of the advertising budget for FF13. It is also noted, however, that the $48 million figure for FF12 acknowledges that it does NOT include the marketing, thus raising the costs on 12. (I don't have exact marketing costs, so I'm not going to say it was in fact $X.) The 1.5x multiplier for FF13 is also not cemented, but it's also not clear as to whether this was purely for development costs ($72m on development before marketing), 50% more after marketing, or what.

Even with the increased  information we have regarding movies we don't really know if they made a profit or not.  The budgets are generally estimates that don't include marketing costs.  We don't know how much of the ticket sales actually go back to the studio, and the percentage changes the longer the movie is out.  International numbers also have a different percentage that goes to the studios.  On the other end you have rentals, DVD sales, merchandise, etc.

There is definately more clarity than in gaming, but it is still a mess.

May I take part of this list sir?

I don't see why not! But I can't tell you here, otherwise those "lower" posters will be able to get their own minions

I long for the day that the video game industry finally grows up.

Where is this proof you speak of?  Direct quote:

"Reuters reports that Ryan Payton, assistant producer for MGS4, said the game needs to sell over one million copies on the first day to help recoup the cost of production."

It doesn't even say anything about breaking even at that point.