Hi Microsoft fans, the exercise and question are in the title, but I'll copy it here jic:

How much revenue does a typical Halo game make and does it cover marketing costs?

For reference, the game sell on average 9 million, at a launch MSRP of 59.99USD, then selling at end-life at MSRP 19.99USD (I believe).

With that, how much does the game sell in its launch window (at MSRP of 59.99USD), in general, and given these charts, assuming the launch MSRP lasts for a year, what is your estimate? How much do you think the game costs to make on average?

I did mine:

Total revenue: 332.4m$

Total cost of development: 60m$

Total cost of advertisement: 50m$

Total profit: 222.4m$

i would say nobody can guess it. i mean, how can anyone know how much they advertise on the whole planet and how much it costs? and we have absolutely no clue how many dlc's they sold, maybe in some microsoft financials, no clue.

but at least we can talk about the revenue of the first day, week or end of the financial quarter, microsoft is giving out the numbers:

halo 4: 220 million first day

halo 3: 330 million until sept. 30 2007, the end of their first financial quarter.

reach: 200 million first day

I feel like I'm pulling someone's teeth out :D

Could I get some number estimates? I'll post my own too but wow the participation is low. XD

I think it's apparent that Microsoft spends a lot of money on advertising. I would assume that their profit margin isn't as great as we would believe. I mean they spend millions on advertising these games. Probably tens of millions.

Halo makes so much money, they should of named it horns, cause they are mak'n off like the devil himself.

MS never said how much Halo 4 costed, only that it was their most expensive game.

Im just guessing, but id say anything over 3 million copies is pure profit for a full fledged Halo game

one more thing you should never forget, there are a lot of people who only pay for live because of halo or cod and they wouldn't if they wouldn't play halo and/or cod online

that could also bring yearly revenue of tens of millions.

RolStoppable said: crissindahouse said: one more thing you should never forget, there are a lot of people who only pay for live because of halo or cod and they wouldn't if they wouldn't play halo and/or cod online that could also bring yearly revenue of tens of millions. Xbox Live is irrelevant, because this thread is more about Nintendo than Microsoft anyway. EDIT: Everything will lead back to this.

now it's no surprise anymore

Don't forget to remember this:

(While it won't be 100% accurate for all titles, it's a good starting point)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/anatomy-of-a-60-dollar-video-game.html

so 34 for microsoft then? thought it's more like 30 and only 23 for publishers + 7 royalty if games are from other companies.