How many Copies does a game such as gears or resistance have to sell to make money for the developers?

Techiqually after the first sale, they are beginning to earn back the money they spent. However if your talking about covering developing cost and making MORE than what you've spent. Well it varies really, some games obviously cost more (Final Fantasy 13) than others (Megaman 9)*.

* Writers note - I cannot prove or disprove megaman 9 did not have a higher production cost than Final fantasy 13. I estimate that it is that way.

Well, I remember someone at Konami saying MGS4 pretty much had to sell a mil day 1 to make money. MGS4 was in development like, 4 years? Prob comparable to most HD AAA current gen titles.

lol chenguo

at the start of the gen, Sony revealed that the amount that needs to be sold to break even on an 'average' game is 200, 000. How they defined average is unknown.

However, Sony have since reduced the price of the SDK, and perhaps coding has become quicker as developers get more experienced with the cell architecture.

But it also depends - the more frontloaded a game is, the better economies of scale of transport, and price cuts make it even more complicated.

So for average games
PS3

Wait a second we had several developers say including first party developers say the profitable mark is a million for an average exclusive ps3 game.

A firstparty game normally 1 Miljon.

Technically Wii developers only have to sell games to their close friends and parents to make money.

All devs say something else, I know those of Ridge Racer said they need to sell around 500k copies.

Yeah, I remember Namco bitching about 500k awhile back too.

lol @ Squilliam's remark.