Let's throw some ridicilous numbers around:

150M (dev costs, manufacturing and marketing)
Revenue first day: 220M
Copies sold first day: 3.x something.
Copies sold now: 5.1+M
Price : Still high.

Halo 4 like any Halo has made a ton of profit already.

Halo is a 3B+ franchise, total costs for games will probably be around 500M.

Even assuming every single halo game including Halo Wars, Halo Anniversary, and Halo 3 ODST cost 100mil to make and 100mil to market, the profits from halo would still be well over 2billion. Microsoft pocketing at least 1billion of it.

"The games have sold over 46 million copies worldwide, with the games alone grossing almost $3.4 billion"

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-10-31-more-than-46-million-halo-games-have-been-sold-worldwide

And those numbers are excluding the Halo 4 launch.

Oh noes, you've uncovered me.

... give yourself a medal man. What does it matter what this thread is for, I'm asking people a question.

I really don't get what the big deal is, people on here have a serious problem if they can't follow a simple exercise without getting full-on paranoid.

I'm being dead serious.

which big deal? my sentence did not really have any weight^^

Every Halo has been profitable after opening week.

Okay, let me try.

59.99$ MSRP over 52 weeks. Let's do Halo 3, best case scenario:

After 52 weeks halo 3 sold 8.2m worldwide. Assume a worldwide common MSRP at the same currency equivalence, for simplicity sake, we have sales of

8.2m * 59.99$ = 492m

Converting that into revenue using mfz's wonderful graph, we have

Platformer Royalty = 7/60 * 492m = 57.4m$

Publisher = 27/60 * 492m = 221.4m$

for a total of

278.8m$ revenue over year 1.

Assuming a mid-life MSRP of 29.99$ over the next 2.5 years, we have a total of

11m sold at y3.5, for a delta of 2.8m, which yields sales of

2.8m * 29.99 = 84m$

Converting that into revenue , we have

Platformer Royalty = 7/60 * 84m = 9.8m$

Publisher = 27/60 * 492m = 37.8m$

for a total of

47.6m$ revenue from year 1 to 3.5.

Then there is a remaining .6m sold at 19.99$, for sales of 12m$. Let's just throw in half of that as revenue.

For a total revemie of 278.8 + 47.6 + 6 = 332.4m$

From a revenue of 332.4m$, what are the expenses estimated at in terms of development?

Assuming a 150-man team over the course of 4 years, we have, at an average of 100k a year,

150*4*100k = 60m$

What's left is 272.4m$ for advertising. Anyone have an estimate of what advertising costed? I got a rough number for blockbuster movies priced at 50m$.

We're now talking 222.4m$ profit with blockbuster-level advertising.

tl;dr

Total revenue: 332.4m$

Total cost of development: 60m$

Total cost of advertisement: 50m$

Total profit: 222.4m$

It's a multi billion dollar franchise so of course it is profitable. As far as I'm aware each halo has made profits on launch day. They advertise it for a reason. Why is because they know how much money they make off of it. If they didn't they wouldn't have made Halo 4