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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo Games Need To Sell 2 Million On Average To Be Profitable

That doesn't seem right.



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Jason why you haven't fixed the title yet? Your title sounds like ''all Nintendo games need to sell 2m to be profitable'' when it's about big budget ones ( in Nintendo's standards ), it's not difficult to understand this, since miyamotto used TLOZ BOTW as a paradigm when he made this statement!
Do you think that TLOZ BOTW development c osts as much as Captain toad treasure tracker?
So many hours passed since the thread was made, with so many complains about the misleading title and title still the same!

It's frustrasting that you haven't perceived your mistake or rather your omission, it should have been specified what Nintendo games need to sell 2m to be profitable ! No mod cared to correct it? Now most of the people who just read the title and ignored the op, will have the notion that every Nintendo game needs to sell 2m to be profitable and whichever fails to sell 2m is unprofitable... :!

Of course you have been misled by the wrong wording of zhuge, '' average games'', he means the bigs  ones by that, he has clarified it in a later tweet!



Maybe Zelda's costs are so high that it changed the average by a lot. shrugs.



e=mc^2

Gaming on: PS4 Pro, Switch, SNES Mini, Wii U, PC (i5-7400, GTX 1060)

MDX said:

I see it as 2 million not being for the games themselves, but for Nintendo as a company.

To keep the company running their games would have to sell an average of 2 million.

Luckily they make money on hardware as well.  This is why they wont go third party.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All console owners make their money back on software. This is why the wii u was sold at a loss when it came out. The only reason why Nintendo isn't in trouble is because of the 3ds software



CaptainExplosion said:
This doesn't swing right with me. They kept making several Fire Emblem games, yet most of them didn't even pass ONE million units (till Fire Emblem Awakening). Clearly it was a profitable series, otherwise it would've been scrapped at some point.

That's not a very good example. Awakening was meant to be the last entry in the series due to low sales of the previous entries lol



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tak13 said:

Jason why you haven't fixed the title yet? Your title sounds like ''all Nintendo games need to sell 2m to be profitable'' when it's about big budget ones ( in Nintendo's standards ), it's not difficult to understand this, since miyamotto used TLOZ BOTW as a paradigm when he made this statement!
Do you think that TLOZ BOTW development c osts as much as Captain toad treasure tracker?
So many hours passed since the thread was made, with so many complains about the misleading title and title still the same!

It's frustrasting that you haven't perceived your mistake or rather your omission, it should have been specified what Nintendo games need to sell 2m to be profitable ! No mod cared to correct it? Now most of the people who just read the title and ignored the op, will have the notion that every Nintendo game needs to sell 2m to be profitable and whichever fails to sell 2m is unprofitable... :!

Of course you have been misled by the wrong wording of zhuge, '' average games'', he means the bigs  ones by that, he has clarified it in a later tweet!

Average means that some games can do with less, while some others need more. The title is slightly misleading ('on average' should really be added to it), but I don't think the average thing has a mistake. I also could not find the clarification tweet you mentioned, despite looking at almost all of his tweets after the one talking about averages. If there's a clarification tweet, I'd really like you to link it here.



CaptainExplosion said:
This doesn't swing right with me. They kept making several Fire Emblem games, yet most of them didn't even pass ONE million units (till Fire Emblem Awakening). Clearly it was a profitable series, otherwise it would've been scrapped at some point.

I'd like to point out that development costs are constantly rising and have risen, and thus some time ago games needed to sell less copies than they have to now. Also, a lot of Fire Emblem games are handheld games, which means their developement costs are lower than those of home console games. That, of course, means that they need to sell less to be profitable, and since we're talking about averages (despite the misleading thread title), there isn't really any problem here.



Lawlight said:
Nintendo spends $0.5B per year on marketing so even if their games are cheap to make, they spend a lot on advertising.

Source?



tbone51 said:
Lawlight said:
Nintendo spends $0.5B per year on marketing so even if their games are cheap to make, they spend a lot on advertising.

Source?

Happy to oblige:

https://mynintendonews.com/2015/09/06/nintendo-spent-10-of-income-on-advertising-during-the-last-fiscal-year/



So we have titles sold for $40 like: Captain Toad and Kirby Rainbow Curse

Titles sold for $50: Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and Zelda Remakes

And titles sold for $60: 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Xenoblade X, Smash Bros

But then we have mini games like Games and Wario, Amiibo Festival, and Mario Party 10...

And then titles that are $60 like Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, and Super Mario Bros. U that have much smaller development than Mario Kart 8, Smash, or Xenoblade.

Which titles would be considered an average Nintendo title?