Wait so let's assume 30 million budget equals 1 million shipped to break even or make a small profit. Rumours had the KZ2 budget at 42million euros. Which is about $65million. Then that would mean 2.15million shipped just to break even. That's assuming KZ2 features a standard advertising budget for a 1st party game and not a larger one.

Rumours were MGS4 had a budget of around $50million iirc. So that would mean including massive advertising it had, around 1.8million copies shipped to break even. So hey good news is MGS4 has already turned a pretty nice profit.

But 2.15million for KZ2 seems like a lot. KZ2 isn't a franchise like halo, mario, FF where 5million+ is guarnteed. It isn't even like MGS where 3/4million + is guarnteed. I mean even if KZ2 sold 3million that doesn't seem like a good return on such a massive investment.

Ooops
Obviously I meant PS3 for the second "PSN"

Thats A lot.

As people have already mentioned it is pointless to put a base number for profitability because Singstar and MLB 08 obviously won't cost as much as games like Killzone 2.  But it is nice to see how much they make from each copy of a first party game.

why does this not surprise me? haven't people here been saying that for like 18 months now? Still, it;s nice to have someone actually confirm it.

hmm i think it crazy to expect the average game to cost 20 - 30 million.

 I mean GeOW only cost Epic 10 million to devlop + markreting costs ... imho i believe he is talking about games Uncharted and LAIR which were huge projects using all new engines and were extremly expensive to make as a result.

But he quotes 20-30 million... which is the accepted cost of creating a next gen HD game when including advertising.

10 million.... without advertising... and Epic doesn't have to lease their own engine from themselves. Unreal engine 2 still costs 6 figures + royalties.

Unreal 3... is going to cost you quite the pretty penny. Also, since they developed the engine... they know it best, don't have to spend extra time figuring it out, don't need to call out the experts for help, and wait while epic gets back to you. (which apparently takes a while.)

Some cost more, some cost less.... 20-30 million seems like a very good baseline though.  I mean the 360 and PS3 really aren't getting any of the "lower budget" games anymore outside of movie ports, those are all going to the wii.

All the more reason to go multiplatform.  10% to port the game or so... and then for 22-33 million you just need to sell 500,000 average on each console.

I wonder how much other titles and ones on other systems need to break even...
Is it true Red Steel cost more to develop than Geow1?

Gears of War is an example of a developer using the philosophy of less equals more. They did a wonderful job of using subtle optical cues to manipulate gamers into ignoring missing detail. Black backdrops are ignored in favor of the dark dull colors that seemingly blend into the darkness. That same dark dull color pallet makes the gamer see gorgeous detail that just is not there. The third person perspective limits the viewable environment. All of this means less has to be rendered in the game environment. With the player usually being unaware.

I think it is a credit to the quality of the developer that they could make the game work with such subtle cues. However most game developer are hardly that skilled, and most game types do not lend themselves to such devices. Were Gears a first person shooter, or played out in a more brightly lit locale. Chances are the perception would be very different.

That said Gears of War really is an exception to the rule. The developer thanks to design choices got to cut a lot of corners. Had they been forced to fill in those corners the games development costs would have been much higher. Basically they only had to render half a world so half the cost was to be expected.