I have a friend who owns a small independent video game store.
His margins are much smaller than what many of you have described here.
They do not hit $10 a game -- even on a $60 title.
Of course, when you are selling in the double-digits for blockbuster titles and single digits for other titles, you end up paying what the wholesalers charge.

(I would assume the larger firms have the clout to buy directly and get better deals, and thus have more price flexibility).

Mike from Morgantown

Publisher AND developer? i'd say 15-20.

With the publisher getting around 10-14 of it.

There was a thread before. Wholesale seemed to offer MK Wii for about 30 Euros to a single buyer. Which means a large retail chain can get it for less from wholesale (buying power). I would estimate about 20-25 Euros from wholesale. Then cut of license fees and shipping and production and some for the wholeseller and maybe you get abou 10-15 Euros.

I know based on various time limited offers I have seen around that big chains ( Best Buy, Amazon) get their game at 40$ or less based on sales I have seen of new games.( that's for games that retail at 59.99$)

Smaller shops probably have to pay a lot more for them.
But lets be honest, in a market like the US, the huge majority of game sales happens through big chains ( Wall Mart + Target + Gamestop + Toys R Us + Best Buy + Amazon + Circuit City is probably over 75% of the market...).

So the fact that small shops pay more end up affecting very little the final number...

How do you calculate so that you arrive at $40?

I've seen games not discounted like CoD4 or AC being retailed at 40$ both on Amazon and Best Buy for a limited amount of time.

As I doubt they would sell those games at a loss and I know it wasn't a market wide discount by the distributor ( and those were not first party games discounted to increase console sales) this leads me to believe Best Buy and Amazon purchases those games at 40$ or lower...

If they do it's fair to assume their big competitors or power houses like Wall Mart do too...

And seeing how the US market is very dominated by big chain sales, this is the number we should use to have an idea of how much profit the retailer make on a 60$ sale.

Hi, maybe its true for USA but here in Europe, it is not at all like that.

I am a little independant retailer and i make 8€ on a 60€ game.

Bye. 

The real question is what percentage of games are sold through big chains compared to what percentage are sold through independant retailers in Europe...

If independant retailers are less 15% or so of the market, the fact they have smaller margins is pretty much irrelevant in the big picture.. Besides the fact that in the case of independant retailers their margin are smaller because they have to go through one more intermediary, in the end the publisher might be getting the same amount of money...