I was reading a BBC article about how the average PS3 game(and we can assume 360) costs upwards of $15 million to make(does not include avertising budget). This peaked my intrest towards how much profit is made per game sold.

 Most places I have read have said between $17-$20 of the game sale goes to the developer. That leaves us with a low sales figure of 750k just to break even. Does anyone have a reputable source (I was able to find the numbers in tech blogs and things of the sort) for how much profit is actualy made per game?

If you think about that we could very well see a lot of devs go under this generation.....and more devs getting bought up (an potentially ruined) by EA and companies of the sort. Consolodation of the game market will leave few developers and more game company monopolies. A few flops can ruin mid sized companies.

Will next gen (PS4/XBOX720/Wii 2) games jump another $10 as the average cost of development will run closer to the 30 millon mark(will gems have to sell around a million just to break even)? I am being pessimistic about this but I see a future with less games on each system and the majority of games being multi platform.

 This worries me a bit, and its no ones fault per say but I see the near future of gaming being a completly different animal than it is today.

Well it depends on how the game is published. 1st party titles naturally make more money per unit sold as there are no license fees and no publisher to take a chunk out.

However, for 3rd party developers that go through outside publishers probably get even less than the stat you provided as they have to pay for licensing, retailers get a chunk, publishers get a big chunk, and they get what is left.

This is one of the things I have said is going to be a huge hurdle for the PS3. Either the budgets are going to need to be huge (resulting in many more sales for the games to be profitable,) they will need to cut content or make very short games (to cut down on development costs,) lose 3rd party exclusives (as it costs a LOT less to port than to develop from scratch) or all three.

This is the nature of moving in to HD game as just graphical elements (textures, models, MOCAP, etc) take MUCH longer to develop and cost much more, plus gamers demand much more advanced programming from the machines (advanced physics, IK, AI, etc,) which also takes more time and money, causing development teams to grow.

This is why 360 and PS3 games are 60 dollars (standard,) just think of how little money would go to developers if they stayed at $50...