just wondering, what is the budget of xbox and ps3 average console games. Bause its obv more than the prev gens game and probably below the wii... Also how many games would hv to be sold to break even on an average budget game is it one million or more or less?

I'm not exactly sure, but i'm going to assume that it's an average of around 5-7 million.

if you want the budget of an "average" quality hd (ps3/360) game it is between $12-15 Million.

I think Developers end up with about $30-$40 off each game, so depending on the budget, most would only have to sell 400K to break even or even walk away with some money in their wallet.

It depends on what you mean by "Average" and what kinds of games are included ... If you include shovelware and PSN/XBox Live Arcade games into the calculation you would probably have a mean average in the $5 to $10 Million range; when you take those out of the calculation the mean average would be closer to $15 to $25 Million.

Username2324 said: I think Developers end up with about $30-$40 off each game, so depending on the budget, most would only have to sell 400K to break even or even walk away with some money in their wallet.

 

Really? I've heard numbers in the $15-25 range quite often. I doubt it's as high as you said, since retailers and other middlemen cut out a huge chunk.

As for the budgets, the biggest games have really big budgets like GTA4 - $100 million. MGS4 is likely more (maybe significantly more) than $50 million judging from the number of people who worked on the game and development length. Halo 3 was not that expensive, just $30 million plus the same in marketing/developer bonuses according to analysts' estimates.

More average games are around $20 million according to most reports I've seen.

I don't have the sources at hand, these figures are from memory but based on things you can probably find with google.

 

average games such as fps's not like playstation store or xbox marketplace mini games

Of course... Downloadable titles are much cheaper, since they're quicker to develop and don't have as much content (i.e. levels, textures, etc) in them.

the important question is do you include marketing/advertisement in budget and do you include it in the money they get.

38$ for publishers sounds pretty good. The development budget will only be part of the game budget though. So Take2 will most likely get 38$ per sold game but Rockstar will get much less.

If the 100m GTA4 number is true, it most likely includes the biggest advertisement campaign I have ever seen for a game.

I'm not sure but I think the $100 million doesn't include marketing:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/gta-iv-most-expensive-game-ever-developed

It probably includes stuff like licensing of the songs though.

EDIT - another link:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article3821838.ece

"It's like making a theatre production, a few movies and an album all to fit into one package,' he says. He hasn't a clue how much GTA IV has cost to make but hazards a guess at $100m. About 1,000 people have had a hand in developing it. The perfectionism Houser and Benzies demand of their teams is astonishing. For GTA IV, time-lapse cameras were set on rooftops in New York to capture the correct intensity of the rain. Over 100,000 photographs were taken on location."