a few extra million for a mere port of an already complete game is certainly significant. especially when it can turn into dozens of millions in the next installment.

Sega all star racing sold 250k maybe it made a small profit

For Capcom

Maybe they made money with monster Hunter Tri but they surely lost some from resident evil

I'll give you Capcom and Sega in the'' We made money group'' but for the rest hell no.

For Activision( two highest sellers everything else is under 50k)

I doubt they made money with those sales

For EA, they almost stop supporting the console all together that's not a sign of we made money on the wii U

and Ubisoft

They lost money with zombiU we already know that, just dance was probably really cheap so maybe they made money, Ass creed no way they made money with those sales ESPN I don't know

LOL WUT?

First of all, here it seems to be consensus that only million-sellers (or near million sellers) turn a profit. If that would be true, most gaming companies would be bankrupt and the big companies would have cancelled every game except the few big ones. Atlus is making profit (it's the mother company index who is bankrupt). Atlus recently hit with Catherine 1 million and it is the first Atlus-game to do so. Atlus kept releasing Etrian Odyssey, although it barely sold over 100K. And that was a new game every time, for WiiU we talk about ports mostly.

Transformed Racing made MAYBE a SMALL profit? What you say is Sega don't know how to calculate. If they calculated to sell 250K on each platform to reach profatibility, they would be very dumb. It's hard for a multiplat, especially not that high-profile, to reach such numbers. They probably calculated that the game payed for itself if each main platform (X360, PS3, WiiU) have 100K copies sold and 3DS and Vita were handled as ports that pay itself with some 10K. They have made a game before in the series and could reuse models and textures, to reduce the costs.

For Capcom I think that RE:Revelations maybe ormaybe not is at a loss. It was a remade port, but the remake payed itself with PS3 and X360, so we have to calculate the porting cost. That would be some 10K. So maybe or maybe not that was profitable. But MH3U is far into profatibility territory. The 3DS-version of the game was already an extended port, that surely payed for itself in Japan alone with the sales. That's why the decision to bring it to the West and port it to WiiU. 400K is probably way more than they expected. For sure Capcom made a lot of money here. It really was a relatively easy port from the 3DS-version. They did not change much from the Wii-version in regards to models and textures.

For Activision and Ubisoft - yes Ubisoft stated they lost money on ZombiU. That was a completely newly made game for WiiU. They probably calculated with a loss to test the waters - and probably hoped for more. But Ubisoft also stated the ports were extremely easy to make. They decided to port Splinter Cell, the next Assassins Creed and Watchdogs to WiiU. If they lost on the previous ports, do you think they hate money? That they love Nintendo so much that they port games they have to expect a loss from? Same with Activision, they bring Ghosts to the WiiU. They want to pay money to help Nintendo? Oh hell no, they don't. So BLOPS surely made some (even small) profit, to justify the porting of the newly made Ghosts, with extended engine and all that. The porting in itself is profitable with low sales, probably well below 100K.

And EA the porting-master? Do you think their ports were more expensive than the porting effort of Ubisoft and Activision? I don't think so.

That said, the profit in each case (except MH3U and Sega Racing) were not big enough to be vewry proud of. That makes it easy for EA to skip WiiU now, because they make a lot more money from different platform and they probably hope to hurt the WiiU to strengthen the future platforms they probably get more profit from. But profitable were the WiiU for all these companies for sure.

What does that mean for GTAV? It is a big game, so a port would probably have to sell 100K at full price to be profitable. That would bring GTAV into profit-zone on WiiU - but barely. R* might not bother, or they decide they want to extend their fanbase to other platforms so they bring it over. I have no idea which will happen.

The lowest profit I can see it making rockstar is $600 mill. So a WiiU version would still give them negligible amounts. You're still not getting that that kind of userbase isn't on WiiU and never will be, you're banking on Nintendo fans buying GTAV, and given we've seen no evidence to say they will it's a risk, and don't throw me the "we've never had a game to show they won't buy GTAV" line (we have, but it all gets ignored and tonnes of poor excuses follow.) That's the whole reason it's a risk.

At the end of the day take two gave DS an exclusive GTA game, they're not "haters" if they don't come out with a copy obviously it's simply not worth their time.

even if they sell 20M units, considering about $15 profit per unit would make 300M. subtract 100M+ wich was the cost of the game and you get 200M. And no one said anything yet to counter my argument that even if the wii u profits are small compared to the other two, it still paves the way for the next GTA.

even if they sell 20M units, considering about $15 profit per unit would make 300M. subtract 100M+ wich was the cost of the game and you get 200M. And no one said anything yet to counter my argument that even if the wii u profits are small compared to the other two, it still paves the way for the next GTA.

would you rather put 20 guys for 6month on a port that will give you 2mill in the very best case scenario or would you rather have those same guys working on the team doing the DLCs, therefore shortening the production time, that will give you an easy 100mill or have them work on the next big project. (the numbers here are only for exemple) Time is money, apply very well in this situation.

$15? what are you smoking. They will earn a lot more than $200 mill profit here.

Common sense should prevail, look how 3DS won't get the next portable GTA (if there even is one) despite DS getting one.

Nobody is going to buy a WiiU for GTAV, so the base won't increase.

goodgamesir said:

Wow, with your numbers one can wonder how the hell any company lost money this gen if 100k on a new HD platform is enough to turn a profit for one of the biggest game of the generation. 100K to cover full port into a different platform and architecture, for bug testing, printing, shipping, advertising really? This is an HD platform we are talking about. Nintendo was probably thinking like you about the price of HD gaming and they got cought by surprise by the amount of resources it needed and had to delay so many of their games.

So you want to tell me that Activision hates money and ports Ghosts to WiiU, if not even BLOPS turned a profit. They can't expect  much more sales for Ghosts, maybe 300K. But it works on new technology, that increases the effort needed to port it over to WiiU. So if BLOPS didn't profit, Ghosts will also not. You tell me Eric Hirshberg (CEO of Activision) greenlights this port, if they expect a loss on it? Same with Ubisoft, they port a new Assassins Creed if the old one didn't profit? The userbase of the WiiU did not grow that much, so at least it is risky and brings only a low profit, if the old one was sold at a loss. No sane company would do that. You tell me Activision and Ubisoft can't calculate or love Nintendo so much they are willing to make a loss? No.

You overestimate the costs of a port and probably underestimate the cost needed for producing the graphical assets (models for the world and the characters), the music and the scripting. All things that haven't to be redone on a port. You point to HD, but for programming and testing has HD not much impact, but the initial creation of the art is strongly impacted by HD. Take a look on the ending credits of a modern AAA-game. How many programmers and testers do you see? How many people on the graphical staff, for producing music or sound effects, for story and scripting? You'll see that programming and testing is the smaller part of a modern games budget, and it is the part that is far less affected by HD. So I'm personally not so surprised that Ubisoft said ZombiU (newly made game) was a loss and the ports were pretty easy.

So if you would apply common sense instead of wild assumptions here, you would see that Sega, Capcom, EA, Ubisoft and Activision so far should have profited from the WiiU.

Not so sure on Nintendo though. They do no porting but developed full-fledged exclusives. New games are hit hard on the impacts of the switch to HD (I agree with you on this). But that is all done already for the ports. So I think Nintendo might be currently losing on some games, although they also have some advantages as the platform-holder, so it is hard to say really.