I don't think Motorstorm made that much money. Lets say it sells 750k WW. If 20% of retail price is reserved for development, a perfectly reasonable number, that means devlopment got $9 million from sales. The development probably cost that much which means they are close to breaking even. Nobody wants to just break even, they want significant returns on their investment. 

So.......when is home coming out?  this month sometime?  what day?

While i agree that Motorstorm isn't going to lose sony money, there are much more costs to a game besides just development.  Marketing, and paying retailers comes to mind among other things.  Motorstorm didn't sell well in Japan, but it should sell a little better in Europe.  Sony is supposed to make up the money they lose on systems by selling games, which they aren't doing a good job of doing either.

First to Kwaad's insightful observation on Godfather:

Sony probably pockets more than 20% from retail sales. That's saying that 80% goes to the retailer itself which is ridiculously high. It's probably the game stores that pocket 20% from software sold. Anyway, it's too hard to figure out what the actual percentages are, so it's probably not worth arguing over. But keep in mind that development costs for Motorstorm are spread out across a number of other titles. The Motorstorm engine has already been confirmed to be the basis for the latest PS3 Wipeout game, and most likely there will be a Motorstorm2 within a couple of years that utilizes the same code. Expect to see game engines shared across many games in the years to come. The auto industry is the prime example for cutting huge development costs by sharing key components over many model lines.

 Edit: Is there a convenient way to just quote Fishy's last post rather than quote every exchange both of us have had? It looks kinda silly the way it is right now

PS3 will rebound once the good games come out. Here and in Japan. Don't count it out just yet.

I keep saying this but..I don't think that Wii will ever pass 360 in America.  It doesn't need to on a gloabal basis to sell the most hardware and software.  In recent weeks, Wii accounts for 2x+ the the combined sales of PS3 & 360 in Japan.  Wii's lead over 360 in Japan will soon become so large over 360 that it will offset the 360's lead in the USA - especially as that lead slowly shrinks year to year.

Sales rates are roughly 80k Wii, 50k Xbox 360 in non-holiday weeks in the USA.  With Wii supply constrained, and 360 getting major software throughout the year, there will be times when 360 outsells Wii in America this year.  If you look at it for the whole year (with holidays that is), I think the average Wii closing in on 360 rate would be about 8-12k per week, not the 30k it was in Jan-Feb and early March (before supply got tight).  At those rates Wii would gain about 400-600k on 360 per year in the USA.  But, I don't think that rate will hold up for 5 years +.  When the main 360 sku is in the $200's it will probably be seen as the system worth the most for your buck in the USA, while Wii will be a close second with it's crazy motion games, Nintendo games, 3rd party exclusives, and cheaper price.

PS3 will reach 3 or 4 million units at least in Japan, (I see it hitting 7 or 8 million) meaning that it can lag behind 360 in the USA like it is (say 15k per week slower rates than 360) because it sells roughly 10k more at least in Japan than 360, and will probably do better than 360 in Europe once the price drops. 

Overall, Sony's sales are lower than I expected but not that surprising.  I still think they will hit 8 million LTD by the end of the year.  Wii looks to be at least 15 milion LTD (i'm guessing 15 million to 20 million LTD), with around 18 million more likely to me.  360 can be at 14 to 16 million, depending on how many potential Halo and GTA owners already have the system.

I'm not really seeing a lot of terrible news with these numbers.  Maybe I'm missing something here, but it's March.  Console sales typically slow down this time of year and into the summer.  While some fans have said 'this game will change everything' for their favorite system, I haven't been one of those people.

I think some have gotten too used to the amazing sales of the Nintendo DS and think that's the norm.  It's not.  The DS is in a league of its own right now and I think it's going to be there all year.  Everything else will look terrible in comparison.

What I think we can conclude from these numbers is that the transition from the PS2/Xbox/GC generation is going to take a lot longer than some people want it to.  And that plays strongly in Sony's favor since the PS2 is the only really active console of that bunch.  And when people buy a PS2, they're probably not buying another system in the near term.  This also hints that Nintendo may have been right about last generation's graphics being good enough for most users.  But it is kind of sad that the PS3 had its ass handed to it by the GBA.  Guess people aren't willing to get a second job to buy a PS3 after all.

And I'm not too surpirsed by the PS3 versus Wii Godfather sales.  Godfather is a game for gamers, not the majority of current Wii users.  Hopefully that will change as the Wii user base expands.

 That isn't actually all that accurate. Despite the drop the Wii is still outselling all of its home console competition! The 360 and PS3 both lag tens of thousands of units behind. The Wii also much like PS3 hasn't had much if any solid software releases. You have a delayd port from GameCube (SPM) leading Nintendo's Wii against a beautiful almost Real title like Gears or anything Sony has on PS3 to date!

PS3 sold 130,000 units that is very sad, The Wii wasted it and the Wii doesn't have anything that even looks realistic. The Wii is out gunned hardware power wise and out gunned software wise with PS3 getting more exclusive software then Wii. Yet Wii is kicking Sony's butt!

PS2 will not survive this generation, much like PlayStation did not survive the last generation!

Why because PS2 is only 100 or so dollars cheaper then Wii and third parties are likely going to begin ditching PS2 soon. Of course Wii might be a massive asset to PS2 developers will be able to port titles from PS2 to Wii with ease and Maybe even die down their Wii titles for PS2. PS2 will live on but expect a death by 2009! 

enough about godfather, we're talking about a game selling 28k vs 23k.  Those are tiny numbers for both, and honestly i don't trust these new weekly charts enough to say that is completely true.  It wouldn't suprise me if it sold better on PS3 though because of the demographics, and i think even EA is expecting that.