shanbcn said: DKII said: Except it cost 10 times as much.   Trolling is not allowed. Back up your words or F off.

 

This is not trolling, this is the truth HD gaming development costs are ridicilously high, i wouldnt be suprised if cost of making MGS4 was near all 3 previous ones combined.

BengaBenga said: shanbcn said: DKII said: Except it cost 10 times as much.   Trolling is not allowed. Back up your words or F off. I hope you're kidding here, but I must say I totally miss the humour. Although the development costs are not known, we do know that they needed 1 million copies sold on launch day to be on track. It's obvious that MGS 4 was much more expensive than any previous MGS and is among the most expensive games ever. The average PS3 game is reported to cost around $20 million, we can minimally double that to get to MGS4 numbers. That excludes advertising. Konami definitely can't be happy with the sales, cause they don't care about attach rate. I'm sure they made a profit, but I'm sure that when they started the development they budgetted on at least MGS3 level sales.

Ryan Payton acknowledged that the 1 mil day one was definitely a misquote.  Seems everyone heard the quote, but no one heard him say that it wasn't true.  @_@

The game is close to MGS3 in shipped I believe (excluding Subsistence) I mean, Konami said that they shipped 3.94 million copies of this (as of July, who knows where it's at now), and the sell-through (VGC) is at 3.3 million.  Not too shabby.

Konami managed a profit in MGS4's release quarter, so they had to make something off of this.

And we have to remember that this is a third-party exclusive, since we want to assume costs, can we also assume that in order to keep this exclusive that Sony paid for the advertising?  Since Sony also ate the cost on bundling? I mean, since we're assuming.

DMeisterJ said: BengaBenga said: shanbcn said: DKII said: Except it cost 10 times as much.   Trolling is not allowed. Back up your words or F off. I hope you're kidding here, but I must say I totally miss the humour. Although the development costs are not known, we do know that they needed 1 million copies sold on launch day to be on track. It's obvious that MGS 4 was much more expensive than any previous MGS and is among the most expensive games ever. The average PS3 game is reported to cost around $20 million, we can minimally double that to get to MGS4 numbers. That excludes advertising. Konami definitely can't be happy with the sales, cause they don't care about attach rate. I'm sure they made a profit, but I'm sure that when they started the development they budgetted on at least MGS3 level sales. Ryan Payton acknowledged that the 1 mil day one was definitely a misquote.  Seems everyone heard the quote, but no one heard him say that it wasn't true.  @_@ The game is close to MGS3 in shipped I believe (excluding Subsistence) I mean, Konami said that they shipped 3.94 million copies of this (as of July, who knows where it's at now), and the sell-through (VGC) is at 3.3 million.  Not too shabby. Konami managed a profit in MGS4's release quarter, so they had to make something off of this. And we have to remember that this is a third-party exclusive, since we want to assume costs, can we also assume that in order to keep this exclusive that Sony paid for the advertising?  Since Sony also ate the cost on bundling? I mean, since we're assuming.

The quartely figure is not a balance sheet for the game. It does include the income from MGS4, but not the expenses from the 4 years of development.

Of course, Sony could have paid for the advertising, the only thing I say is that MGS4 sold less (albeit only a little) than MGS3, but is far more expensive. Result: less profit. And MGS is Konami's most important franchise which must make the big bucks for Konami.

 

DKII said: Except it cost 10 times as much.

 

Assuming it did cost 10 times that amount (Although I think you gave a conservative estimate actually) and further assuming Konami/Kojima prods. etc get about $5 a game sold (maybe more, maybe less, who knows?) that means they've regained about $3,303,940 from Japan alone. multiply that out world wide ($3.3 million x 5) = $16,500,000 should go some way towards making a profit.

How that stacks up to the cost of the game itself, I don't have a clue

MGS4 has sold great worldwide and its still selling.

Its definitely made back the money invested by now and every new copy sold to retailers cash in Konami's hands. Besides based off PS3's 2007 sales i am lead to believe Konami would not of expected MGS4 to do much better than MGS3....

Konami big profits last quarter mean that MGS4 indeed was big success. 3.94 million shipped figure was of total MGS games last quarter and MGS4 shipped close to 3.5 million in 2.5 weeks. I am sure by now it have passed MGS3 shipped figures and that just in 4 months! Another couple of weeks before we get latest official WW shipped figures for MGS4.

MGS3 sold 860K at 60$/€ = 51,6M$

MGS4 sold 730K at 70$/€ = 51,1M$

Not such a big difference...

I know my match was stupid since we don't know how much konami earns of each copy sold but... well... It must not be so different.

And I guess a lot of MGS4 will be sold for or after christmas.

They sold 3m. We know the publisher gets close to 40$ for each sold game. That's 120m. We know that they got some sweet conditions from Sony so I would be really surprised if they did pay the 10$ tax for the console publisher. I am also quite sure that Sony paid a bit of their advertisement etc.

So whatever money they paid for development they are definitely happy with the sales. You can be sure about that. So go back into the place you came from.

Aprisaiden said: MGS4 has sold great worldwide and its still selling. Its definitely made back the money invested by now and every new copy sold to retailers cash in Konami's hands. Besides based off PS3's 2007 sales i am lead to believe Konami would not of expected MGS4 to do much better than MGS3....

 

Yes, indeed, but MGS 4 needs to make a lot of profit. It is Konami's #1 franchise. Companies don't want something to break even, they want profits. These 10.000+ copies that are sold every week are nice, but won't cut it for Konami. My guess would be that it needs at the very least a 40% Return on Investment for Konami. That means that for every dollar they invested they earn $1.40. I really wonder whether they have made their target.

Also: Konami didn't start the development knowing the PS3 would not do so great. They thought it be the new PS2.

 

Kyros said: Konami definitely can't be happy with the sales They sold 3m. We know the publisher gets close to 40$ for each sold game. That's 120m. We know that they got some sweet conditions from Sony so I would be really surprised if they did pay the 10$ tax for the console publisher. I am also quite sure that Sony paid a bit of their advertisement etc. So whatever money they paid for development they are definitely happy with the sales. You can be sure about that. So go back into the place you came from.

 

Actually publishers get around $25,- (and have to pay the developer from that)
Sony gets $9,
Retailer gets $ 12,-
Marketing: $7,-
Distribution, manufacturing: $3,-

And no, in Sony's current financial situation they definitely didn't cut the fee's from one of the best selling games.