Now thats what I call...

Heavy Sales.

YEaahhhhhhhhhhhh

But by eschewing direct interaction in favour of QTEs, and by focussing on story over gameplay, it diminishes the interactivity, and does so in favour of elements that are better offered by movies. It falls into a no man's land between game and movie where it's not successful as either one.

Good news but why is it so much after the release? The cost of the game is surprisingly cheap.

I think what really matters for the the success of a game is the expectation you have for it. If you expected a game like Tomb Raider to sell 8-10 Million lifetime ( just an example) than you will most probably struggle to reach that goal as a puplisher. If you have realistic expectations for a game than you will spend only as much money on producing and advertising a game as you think it will make money back with such an investment.

Thats the reason why some games are profitable with 1 million in sales and somenot with 3 million. If you think your game will sell 8 million lifetime and spend 50 million in marketing and the game will only sell 3 million lifetime than its no wonder that you will lose this battle.

Thats one of the reason why sony not advertise some games right because they know that some games will not sell well and they would do a mistake making 20 million marketing campagnes for such games as they will lose way more money this way. Thats the reason why some games get sequels which have only sold about 200-500k units because they dont spend much money in marketing the game and produce it cheap.

Not every game cost 20 million to make and get a 20 million marketing campagne.

The whole industry is highly profitable if you ask me, problem is that to many puplishers have unrealistic predictions and thats why some games will never made there money back.

And beside all the developer studios dying there is one question no one ask. How many new studios are born each year?

The whole videogame industry is in good shape. Especially with all the DLC and downloading content which can make a lot of money ( Little Bg Planet DLC for example)

Yes, absolutey. I agree with everything you said. By using the word "split" I didn't mean 50-50% (does "split" mean exactly that? I'm a foreigner so I don't know lol).

Yeah, typical for a contract is that the publisher takes nearly all the profit but the developer gets royalties based on a pre-set percentage in the contract (a percentage that often progressively is increased if the sales meet certain targets).

I agree that $30 is a rough but reasonable amount to use when we estimate how much each copy of a game sold represents in revenue to the publisher.

For third party publishers it's probably a little less than $30 and for Sony/MS/Nin slightly more because they obviously take the licensing fee of $7-8 for themselves (but on the other hand they tend to sell the first party games a few dollars cheaper on average so the difference isn't actually $7-8).

About the copies sold at full price, it depends on the game. Like you and I did here, for arguments sake and simplicity it's often easiest to just assume that every copy is $60 and the the publisher gets $30, but factors that decrease that amount are:

* when the publisher allows the distributor and/or retailer to return unsold copies

* when the publisher gives the retailer a rebate on their next game due to one game flopping and ending up on bargain bins

* when the publisher decides to give a discount to a big, important retailer chain like Walmart (according to Patcher this happens)

* when a game is bundled

* when a game gets GOTY editions and re-release editions, which retail for substantially less than $60

It's a blend of both, which is why i said it's a different experience. I think it succeded in what it was setting out to do and it shows in the fans, profit, reviews.

But the problem with playing both sides of the field is that ultimately you have to succeed as one or both. Heavy Rain wouldn't pass the standards expected of good movies, and because it reduces gameplay to a series of QTEs it doesn't win out as a game either. The erosion of gameplay quality in favour of story and visuals, the Hollywoodization of gaming, is already a grave threat to the medium, and Heavy Rain is a game that exemplifies this trend.

Good question. Heavy Rain was also high budget. I doubt most games have a higher budget than it had. However, it's probably on the low end spectrum of the games that do such as CoD and GTA. I'd also like to point out that the people who estimate games to be upwards of 50mil without marketing are absolutely crazy. The games with those types of budgets are far and few between.

So, back to your question. How do game developers who mostly develop low budget games (comparatively) struggle? Hmm... I wonder... Do do do do do do do... do do do do doot do do do do (thats the jepordy song)... Only thing I can think of is maybe multiplats aren't as lucrative as some may think.

The arm chair analysis in this thread is hilarious.

"no no no... this guy cant be right. It must be like this even though I have no connection to the industry"

Heavy Rain. Those words will always bring out a few 'experts' to educate us on what a 'real' game is like.