Good, it was perfect. Sony/MS destroying each other how could this not be met with open arms on here ?

Even though the first post was nothing but op's opinion and no facts and filled with doom and gloom ignorance.

"Sony bundles MGS4 and GTA4 with zero added cost for the consumer vs the console's price. This negates any gain from royalties on those two games. They'll be losing money in two ways when someone buys one of those bundles"

If the kid can't even understand what the strategy is he should not even bother making threads and talking money.

Even a blind man can see they are pushing hardware, screw royalties on these two games if they can heavly drive hardware adoption. The bigger the user base the better ALL the OTHER games sale the more Sony makes from royalties the more they sale of their own games.

Thus its actaully not bad idea to forgo royalties even pay out of their pocket and use GTA and MGS to drive hardware when you got LBp Resistance2 Motorstom2 Killzone2 SocomC coming this year and you want to build a solid user base to please all the 3rd parties and carry big momentoum for Xmas 08

That was hard.

So is anyone going to post actual info on what it costs to bundle a game, for both the console maker and the game developer?

I think it's pretty obvious that companies such as Take Two sell their games to Sony for pretty much the revenue they get from the game. For first party, it doesn't cost anything except some "lost opportunity".

doubt it. this thread is just full of speculation.

Most posters on this site do not appreciate the concept of war by attrition. The goal of such a contest isn't to win with strategy or cunning. The goal is to use your size to deplete the opponents resources. Usually in such a contest its the side with more resources that wins, because the battles are fought in such a way that the damage wrought on the enemy is equal to the damage sustained. The only question usually is which side will succumb to the damage first.

Unfortunately for Sony they have been losing this war this generation. The damage inflicted is not in line with damage accumulated. To match the movements by Microsoft they have had to make greater sacrifices then Microsoft has had to. Which only makes the opponents less intractable, and only fuels a arms race. Sony is sacrificing three or four for every one Microsoft is sacrificing. Sony desperately expends resources to obtain parity, and Microsoft smells blood in the water.

The carnage will probably only get worse. Sony has already committed so much by liquidating assets, and losing massive amounts of capital. While Microsoft has every intention of insuring that the trend continues unabated. Which means Microsoft is probably never going to let Sony be profitable on their hardware by using their longer production run to continually push down prices, and they are probably going to keep purchasing exclusives forcing Sony to match them.

What disconcerts me, and I am disturbed that it does not concern many on these forums is that Sony is steering a coarse towards a Pyrrhic victory. A victory that is so costly to the victor that they can no longer justify continued combat, because they have exhausted the resources to do so. Sony can ill afford to lose so much and gain so little. Especially since at this point the victory will be terribly hollow they will not remove Microsoft from the field, and both their rivals will leave this generation with real tangible benefits.

Before anyone says BluRay royalties let me say this. Sony could have gotten by with a pittance of what they have lost on the PS3 moving the technology by merely selling cheaper stand alone players. They could have delayed their console until the technology was more affordable, and they would not have had a protracted war in the first place. For what they ended up losing on the first generation of PS3 hardware they could have had two hundred dollar BluRay players on shelves at the end of 2006. They mutually handicapped one another. The player made the console too expensive, and the console made the player too expensive.

^Last time I checked Microsoft was more in the hole than Sony, and to offset PS3 losses Sony has 2 other profitable gaming consoles out that are selling well. Sony has brand exclusives that Microsoft can never buy, while as you stated, Microsoft has to buy their exclusives, I don't think you're looking at the entire picture and I laugh at you for saying "Microsoft smells blood in the water." for if it is anyones blood it is Microsoft smelling their own blood.

Your logic in "Microsoft will use their longer production run to continually push down prices" is flawed, for the technology in the PS3 is so much more advance than the 360, as we all know technology prices drop radically every year, but what you fail to realize is that the technology in the 360 is so simple it can only get so much cheaper than it already is, while in the PS3, there is vast opportunity for reducing cost.

You also forget that Sony has been in this a lot longer than Microsoft, and they know where their money should be going, while Microsoft is throwing away 50 million for some extra content on a single game. I think it's safe to say Sony has atleast a few more tricks up their sleeve while MS has fired their big guns and were unsuccessful in stopping Sony. 

You go on my 360 fanboy list.

 LOL!! OMG ur so helarius man!! lol beggin for sega u r to funny!! Lol!!1!! stuck wit maro and ninteno!! lol lol lol!!

Yeah but the bundle has only been confirmed for europe and the console is more expensive here anyway so any loss of revenue is more than made up for

I fail to see how Sony bundling those games is bad financially for them.

First lets not forget that the amount of MGS4 copies sold through the bundle is going to be very small compared to the total number of games sold ( if MGS4 sells 3 millions copies, it's not going 3 millions copies bundled, I would guess 200k, maybe a little more but any case the percentage of the copies sold through the bundle won't be that high and Sony will still get full royalties on all the others copies).
So even bundling AAA games they won't loose that much royalties on those games..

So basically they giving up royalties and a little more only on the copies that will result in the sale of a PS3, hardly a bad thing....

From a marketing point of view bundles are great.

They create an urgency and force customers to buy now ( because bundles are usually limited in time) whereas otherwise some of them would probably have waited for a later time and a price drop to make their purchase ( and the earliest a customer buy the console, the more games he is likely to buy in the console lifetime).

And finally in terms of costs for the customer a bundle is like getting the console 60$ cheaper whereas the extra cost for Sony is probably a lot less than 60$ ( and who doesn't like the idea of I'm going to give you a 60$ discount but it's actually going to cost me less).

The reason is that  bundled software with hardware is sold as hardware so suddenly you have removed the shop's margin on the software from the equation ( which means that if lets say Best Buy has a 20$ margin on 60$ games, bundling the game only costs 40$ or less to Sony).

In the end a bundle is just a way to make a time limited price cut with the trick that the console manufacturer actually doesn't reduce his prices that much...( in a way the one getting screwed are the game shops as they loose their margin on every game sold through the bundle).

Hmm I don't see how Sony will lose money by bundling MGS4 or GTAIV with a PS3. I'm going to give u some numbers out of my ass, but I'll try to be realistic ok. Say Sony sold 400k GTAIV PS3, and who knows, paid 30 for each copy of GTA4 in it. Then they lost 12 mil dollars.
But lets also assume GTAIV sells 6mil copies and Sony makes 10 for each copy, you guessed it, Sony made (60-12) 48 mil! and they increased their userbase by quite a bit too! And with that 400k extra PS3, they can make even more with more software and movie sales.
So it's not really a bad move by Sony, unless they ship over 2mil bundles lol.. but then, making no money on GTAIV but increasing your install base by 2 mil is a pay off in itself =D
I think Microsoft was a bit crazy paying 50 mil for the GTAIV contents, but somehow, that's going to help them out. Let's hope so for their sake.
Also remember that right now, alot of PS3 sales are coming from Others, meaning every PS3 sold in EU is more profitable than every 360 sold in the US. I think so anyway.
Anyway, those were just random numbers which i though were realistic enough to help back me up lol. Don't flame me for it.