Come on guys! Don't fool yourselves! Uncharted has definitely made profit.

They spent $1M advertising in UK. UK is a third of the European market, so say $3M advertising in Europe. NA isn't that much bigger than Europe, so I would say $5M advertising in NA. That makes $28M.

Because Naughty Dog is owned by Sony, by Daddo Splat's calculations they get $30 per copy sold, or 50%.

Uncharted has sold 480,000 copies in NA, meaning, $14,400,000.

Given that they get 50% of the money on each copy sold, it is fair to say that they get £17.50 ($35) off each copy sold in Europe. The RRP is £40.

Uncharted has sold 670,000 copies in Europe, meaning, $23,450,000.

Say they get $30 off each copy sold in Japan, that means, $1,800,000.

Total: $39,650,000. Take away the $28,000,000, giving $11,650,000 profit so far.

Uncharted continues to sell roughly 45,000 copies a week. Meaning every week thats an extra $1,350,000 profit made.

They spent 1 million pounds on UK advertising.

That would be 2 Million Dollars. Just for the UK.

Also american advertising is much much more expensive.

By your calculations they spent around 40 million total. Not counting distribution costs... or the VAT. Which is an inclusive tax.

So even if you got half of what the game cost in america you wouldn't get half of that thanks to the massive VAT price.

Also... you are massivly lowballing it.

I'd also say you(or rather he) is lowballing software margins. After all they make like nothing on hardware... Actually usually losing money when you count in the transportation of consoles.

From what i can figure out without paying for research matieral is that video games actually have  have some of the highest markups outside of things like cables for stores.  Budget games interestingly having more of a retail markup.

Last generation I believe retailers made around 17 dollars per 50 dollar game. 

 Well then lets double the advertising costs to $16M (very unlikely it was that high) that still leaves $3,650,000 profit, plus the $1,350,000 profit they are making each week. 

When all is said and done, Uncharted will probably be at 2M. 2M multiply $30 = $60M take away $36M, leaves $24M profit. 

I'm tellin ya. Advertising likely cost MORE then game development. You are still lowballing advertisement costs.

Keep in mind that for the average game advertising = half development budget.

That includes games like Chicken shoot, Anubis, Ninjabread man... whatever.

There is much more virtually 0 advertising cost games that don't even spend 5% on advertising then there are big games that get TV ads.

If it makes money it's likely only going to be due to it's first party relationship. 

I saw a TV add for Zack and Wiki the other day. Why would they advertise such a niche game if it costs so much to advertise.

Perhaps they made use of Local Advertising?

All I can tell you is that national advertising is going to cost you a LOT in the US. Maybe it's cheaper in England I don't know.

I've only worked with US advertising.

Either way the cost of advertising in the UK isn't important since we know the exact price they spent on it. 1 Million pounds.

Well actually if we knew how much a 30 second add in the UK cost we could guesstimate the difference.

Edit: Actually yeah it does seem a lot cheaper... on the high end anyway.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/22/advertising.itv

This article says that England not making it to the Rugby world cup will cost one station 10-15 million pounds in advertising, about 20-30 million dollars.

In 2007 the superbowl brought in 151.5 Million dollars.  So that one game brought in around 75 million pounds.

Most people on this thread forget one thing.

Naughty Dog developed the game but they are not a distributor.
Sony distributed the game and the distributor is the one in charge of marketing and advertiser ( you pay the distributor a fee and they like actually do something for that fee..).

What that means is that Naughty Dog cut per game sold is probably smaller than the 24$ or so that some have been speculating due to distributors costs but they did not have to cover advertising fees...

Assuming the 20 million is all that it cost them and Sony took care of everything else in a relationship like this the developer i believe is likely to get around 40% of that $24.

1.25M X $9.60 = 12 Million Dollars... I think? If that was right they'd be at a loss.

Edit: This seems about right, as Gabe Newell seems to suggest that developers make about 7 dollars per game sold through the retail channel.  Though maybe he was downplaying profits because of Steam.  7 seems like an odd number to use though if that were the case.

Your maths are wrong.

Game sells for 60$, retailer keeps at most 25$ out of that( I have seen Best Buy drop the price of a game by 20$ for a week so they make at least that much per game).

Sony gets 10$.

Packaging/game manual probably like 2$.

23$ left for naughty Dog and their distributor ( the fact it's sony is separate from the Sony 10$ which is standard cut for Sony on any PS3 game).

My guess is naughty dog gets 18$ and the distributor 5$ at most.( the distributor doesn't take that many risks imo).

 1.25 Million copies at 18$ they made a small profit.

 In that case the distributor probably didn't make any profit and spent all their cash on advertising but it's sony so they get their 10$ too and it's their interest to have more ps3 games out..

Publishers actually take most of the proft. Because wihtout a distributor the developer can't get his product to the people. They also actually do take most of the risk.

Of course this varies based on what is negotiated and what is done for it. (Marketing budget etc.) This is different from your run of the mill distributor who does nothing outside of just printing the CDs and shipping them to the companies who buy them wholesale. Considering the deals some companies are given though... their cut would have to be substantially more then 5 dollars. Otherwise some of them would be selling at a loss to places like Wal-mart. 

That's why Square Enix refused to publish FF7 outside of Japan.

This is also why Steam is the wave of the future.