Psst, you forgot a few things.

Retailer markup
Batch PO negotiation and brokerage
Disk production
Media cost
Packaging
Shipping charges and taxes
Localization costs
Licenses
Warehouse storage
Operation costs for disk, packaging andgeneral manufacturing

Secondly, the calculation I made was for the "average entry level" employee, assuming all employees were on that same average pay, and does not factor in higher pay, operating costs for the company, resource usage during the production time or outside charges for third party contributors, so even once they hit 4.4 million, they wont have broke even.

Try again.

seach for "video game breakdown cost" - Nintendo does not pay their own fees!

Or you could, you know, come back with an argument that holds water?

If you'd like to use a speculative breakdown, do so, for the paramters you set.

$40 retail price on blu-ray media, go ahead.

As for the "dont pay their own fees bit" let me expand upon the previous list.

Retailer markup - EVERYONE selling to retail, loses here, except for the retailer, thats the entire point of retail.
Batch PO negotiation and brokerage - Sorry but Nintendo or not, everyone pays this.
Disk production - Guess what, Nintendo being Nintendo doesnt make burning your software to media free, everyone pays this.
Media cost - Same as above, only the disk thats being burnt to (theyre not free)
Packaging - Again, packaging isnt free no matter who you are.
Shipping charges and taxes - Nintendo pays this just like everyone else.
Localization costs - Localization teams get paid by Nintendo, go figure.
Licenses - Nintendo pays these too, are you seeing a trend here?
Warehouse storage - Time is money, as is space, Nintendo pays these.
Operation costs for disk, packaging and general manufacturing - Nintendo pays these just like everyone else.

Do not get angry - we have the same interest (video games sales and costs) and as you probably know real numbers on developing costs are hard to get. Here is a qoute from Ubisoft a few years back. Otherwise it is mostly indies that reveal numbers.

"Leading on from this, an Ubisoft executive gave a breakdown of the company's average development costs per game - not often discussed in public - with a DS title costing between 500,000 to 1,000,000 euros ($785,000-$1.57m), PS3/Xbox 360/PC titles averaging 12 million to 18 million euros ($18.8m-$28.2m) to create for all 3 SKUs, and a Wii game expected to cost 5 million to 6 million euros ($7.8-$9m) to develop. "

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18389

EDIT: I would consider Kirby a HD DS game - so your guesstimation of $4.4 millions seem correct to me.

These are figures from 2008, that's 7 years ago, and even then the price to develop the average Wii game is 5-6 million euros (5.2m - 6.3m usd), so the salary calculation i made on previous pages stands firm as a low end figure taking inflation and market conditions into account, the real staff cost is likely to be closer to 6m usd on it's own, which makes the brake even line even higher.

All that link really does is support my calculations/opinion.

Calling it a HD DS game doesn't really cut it, the production costs for DS were much lower because texture work and 3d model complexity were significantly lower, as was overall sound quality.

And everyone credited works all the time the project runs on this one project? That's how you based your calculation off.

52k including digital, right?
seems right.

*SIGH*
Because everyone on the team is working the lowest wage right? and all those extra costs i didnt bother to add don't mean a thing either do they?

Don't sigh me. I simply don't buy it, that at a company like HAL the people all the time are committed to one project, as I don't buy the comparison with Fire Emblem (I'm aware that HD needs more detailed polygons and textures). I think all these calculations are pretty speculative. We simply have no idea, even you, as you don't work for HAL. I'm aware that many people don't work for the low wage you gave and that there are more costs than just the wage. But I also say that the figures you give are probably no lower bound for an estimate either, as it is quite possible that the core team working the full 27 months (all nearly all the time) might be pretty small. So all I saying here is, that the numbers you gave may look conclusive, but the speculation in it is still too big to take them as a measurement. The real budget might be a lot higher, but also a lot smaller. We just don't know.

.......I'm sure that this game will end up being profitable. Just not a month after its been released in two regions....