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Forums - Nintendo - ZombiU Was "Not Even Close" to Profitable, No Plans for a Sequel

Lusche on 08 July 2013
AnthonyW86 said:
Isn't ZombiU the best selling thirth party game on Wii-U?...


yes its the best selling 3rd party game and overall 3rd best selling game on the wiiu  ...
only nintendoland and nsmbu sold more



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Soundwave on 08 July 2013

I wish people would stop using things like the 460k number on VGChartz as gospel. It's a guesstimate on the website's part, not official numbers, we know things are over-tracked by a large amount all the time.

The actual sell through could be 250k or something, who knows.

If Ubi Soft is saying they didn't come close to making money on the game, I'm inclined to believe them.



AIAS on 08 July 2013

I recommend this game to anyone with a WiiU



In Gods we trust. Dattebayo...

WiiU ID:         Aias23

Xbox360/XboxOne ID:  Aias23

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AndrewWK on 08 July 2013
Soleron said:
LilChicken22 said:
Since when is almost half a million sales bad? Too high demandings from third party's for Nintendo.

Resi 6 lost money on 5 million, so..


It did not it missed the sales projections but still was profitable



coreyerb on 08 July 2013
Soundwave said:
I wish people would stop using things like the 460k number on VGChartz as gospel. It's a guesstimate on the website's part, not official numbers, we know things are over-tracked by a large amount all the time.

The actual sell through could be 250k or something, who knows.

If Ubi Soft is saying they didn't come close to making money on the game, I'm inclined to believe them.

The actual number isn't important, just as it doesn't matter that we don't know Ubisoft's actual target sales number.

We know enough to confidently say they misjudged the market for their game and spent too much money on it if 250K-500K-whatever-number wasn't enough to make it profitable. They should've taken it multi-platform the moment they realized not enough Wii U's were owned to allow them to hit a high enough sales figure to turn a profit.



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osed125 on 08 July 2013
Barozi said:

Read that source again. It says with promotion over $100m.
Marketing costs aren't included in the development budgets.

So what else is there ? Licensing costs for the engine/music and perhaps the voice actors and motion capture actors. That's a tiny bit of the budget.

I personally believe that marketing should be included in the total cost, because after all they have to recover that money as well. As for what is in the cost of games: http://www.notenoughshaders.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/2.jpg

This is just an example for Gears of Wars back in 2006, the most important ones are Art/Design and Programming and Engineering.



Nintendo and PC gamer

osed125 on 08 July 2013
Scoobes said:

That number is way too low. Back in 2007 Ubisoft said it had sold 950,000 copies of Red Steel (http://uk.ign.com/articles/2007/04/26/ubis-big-wii-hits). It should have easily broken 1 million by now.

OT: Prior to the WiiU launch ZombiU was probably the most hyped exclusive on the system. I don't think Ubisoft were expecting system sales to be so slugish after the holiday season. It's sold well considering the install base but I'm sure they were expecting more consoles out in the wild to help maintain sales momentum for the game.

You were ninja'd by Barozi, I was using the VGC numbers. Thanks for the link though.



Nintendo and PC gamer

KHlover on 08 July 2013
VGPolyglot said:
So, does that mean only New Super Mario Bros. U and NintendoLand were profitable on the Wii U?

No, you still have Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed. With Monster Hunter 3 being a port I'm pretty sure it made money, too. Lego City Undercover sold relatively well too, but since it is not a port I have no idea how high the development costs were. The 3DS version probably is more profitable by a pretty fair margin. AC3 being a port also could have made a profit, albeit a pretty small one (maybe in the range of single-digit millions).



Some useful VGChartz tweaks

Member of the "An Unbiased Review" Database team

sales2099 on 08 July 2013

Oh Ubi, live and learn. Now bring it to 360.



Xbox: Best hardware, Game Pass best value, best BC, more 1st party genres and multiplayer titles. 

 

okr on 08 July 2013

Unwritten gaming media law:
- When a game disappoints on a MS or Sony system or PC, it's rarely mentioned by the gaming media; when it's mentioned though, the disappointment is always the developer's or publisher's fault.
- When a game disappoints on a Nintendo system, it's often mentioned by the gaming media and always the system's or system owners' fault.