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Forums - Sales Discussion - Rougly how many sales are needed to break even on a high budget game?

Godot on 30 November 2008
Million said:
Godot said:
el_rika said:

MGS4 took 4 years and was around 60 mil without publicity costs, was it not ? Quite possibly the most expensive [purely development costs] game so far.

To break even, around 1 mil copies, maybe a bit more.

 

@Godot - how is SE inneficient compared to EPIC ?

Corridor shooters with simplistic story and very few cinematics and dialogue are infinitelly less complex and cheaper to produce that RPGs with hours of cinematics and dialogue and huge maps with lots of stuff and interaction. Of course a FF like game would cost much more than a Gears like game.

 

Gears of War isn't a corridor shooter. You know creating a virtual world takes a lot of time no matter if it's a shooter or a RPG. If I say Epic is more efficient it's because they most likely will have released 3 Gears of War in the time Square Enix only released Final Fantasy XIII and FFVXIII. Square Enix is taking forever to make its games. If you don't want me to compare Epic to Square Enix. Let's compare Konami and Square Enix. Metal Gear Solid 4 was released this June as a PS3 exclusive. It only took 1 year and a half after the release of the PS3 for them to release the game while Square Enix are relasing the game God only knows when.

Your understanding of anything pertaining to this thread is pretty weak. Firstly FF XIII probably has far more depth than Gears 1 & 2 put together like others have said the amount of cinemtatics , diaglogue , maps , quests , intracies  involved ina game like FF dwarfs anything with the name "Gears on it"

 

 

 

 

Of course, your understanding of anything pertaining to my post is pretty weak. In fact, I don't think you read more than the first 3 sentences. I said, if you think don't want to compare Gears of War to Final Fantasy, you can use Metal Gears Solid instead and my argument remains. You can't possibly say that Final Fantasy FXIII will have more depth than MGS4. People said in this thread that they spent 6 months alone on motion capture. This game is the biggest PS3 exclusive so far and yet it released 6 months ago.

Now, prove me that Konami are not more efficient than Square Enix.

By the way, I don't agree that FF dwarfs anything with the name Gears on it but it wasn't the point of my post to compare Epic to SE but to compare SE to pretty much every other companies.



How many cups of darkness have I drank over the years? Even I don't know...

 

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BengaBenga on 30 November 2008
DMeisterJ said:
BengaBenga said:
shanbcn said:
I love how almost every big budget game is PS3 exclusive or at least on PS3. Can't see likes of 360 and Wii supporting big budget exclusive games.

 

You make it sound like that's a good thing...

Sure it seems great, however if Microsoft/Epic can make Gears for 10 million and Sony need an estimated 60 million for Killzone you can easily figure out who's more successfull. And more money means more means to invest in new games.

You can be sure that Konami won't ever do something like MGS 4 exclusive again.

We don't know how much Killzone 2 costs.  Let's not be absolute in terminology then.

 

I don't know why this is so important to you, but ok.

In my first post in this thread I already said that it's hard to know exactly how much the development of a game costs. Still if you keep track of things you can learn an awful lot and make some pretty educated guesses.

NJ5, FishyJoe and myself for example also read articles from financial publications like Forbes and Bloomberg where you can learn a lot more about the financials behind the industry. Once every while some info is released and by combining this we can get some ideas. Earnings releases also contain lots of info. A lot of small bits can paint quite an interesting pictue.

 



DMeisterJ on 30 November 2008
Zim said:
DMeisterJ said:
There's no real way to know. Not even roughly. It's just guesstimates all up and through this thread. The only ones who know are publishers and the like. We don't know how much games cost unless someone tells us, so speculation of game costs is fruitless.

 

 Could you please read the thread. We know the costs for Lost Planet, Gta4, Stranglehold and Gears of War, none those were ''guesstimates''. They are however reasonable bench marks to then make estimates about other titles.

Shanbcn that is actually very bad for the companies developing on PS3. Games don't sell as well as they do on the 360 and development is far more expensive than on the wii. Why are there still these titles on PS3? Because a lot of these projects were started before it was known Sony would be in 3rd place. Those big budget titles you speak of are purely left overs of companies that couldn't take the title multiplatform. FF13 went multiplat because S-E needed the extra cash because the PS3 alone wasn't enough. MGS4 certainly appeared to be somewhat of a dissappointment for Konami as it was hugely overshipped in Japan. The development costs were clearly far far higher than previous games yet sales weren't.

The question is why has development on these PS3 exclusives taken so long? Gears of War 1+2 have come out before KZ2 and seemingly will support more features having split screen, online co-op and in GoW2 horde mode. Not only that but KZ2 doesn't seem to do anything that would justify that extra time over GoW2.

And like Bengabenga said if games can be made much cheaper on the 360 then companies are making a bigger return on it. There have been big budget games on the 360 but they have been much quicker to come out and so cost less. Just look at games like Mass effect.

If you read my post, I said "unless someone (dev/pub) tell us".

I'm talking about estimiates of how much games cost.  :S

@ Benga

That's fine.  But to be absolute in terminology when guessing is pretty messed up.  We don't know how much KZ2 costs/ed to make. You can guess, but at the end of the day, it is a guess, is it not?  So why be absolute and say it cost 60 million when you don't really know?



HappySqurriel on 30 November 2008
BengaBenga said:
DMeisterJ said:
BengaBenga said:
shanbcn said:
I love how almost every big budget game is PS3 exclusive or at least on PS3. Can't see likes of 360 and Wii supporting big budget exclusive games.

 

You make it sound like that's a good thing...

Sure it seems great, however if Microsoft/Epic can make Gears for 10 million and Sony need an estimated 60 million for Killzone you can easily figure out who's more successfull. And more money means more means to invest in new games.

You can be sure that Konami won't ever do something like MGS 4 exclusive again.

We don't know how much Killzone 2 costs. Let's not be absolute in terminology then.

 

I don't know why this is so important to you, but ok.

In my first post in this thread I already said that it's hard to know exactly how much the development of a game costs. Still if you keep track of things you can learn an awful lot and make some pretty educated guesses.

NJ5, FishyJoe and myself for example also read articles from financial publications like Forbes and Bloomberg where you can learn a lot more about the financials behind the industry. Once every while some info is released and by combining this we can get some ideas. Earnings releases also contain lots of info. A lot of small bits can paint quite an interesting pictue.

 

 

I never get mentioned



Zim on 30 November 2008

Because 60million is a reasonable estimate. The original budget for the game was set at $30million, we know that. It has been delayed constantly and more people hired on so that budget has clearly increased.

And shanbcn let me see if I have this straight more people anticipate MGS4 than GoW? Then why are the sales of GoW 1 and soon to be 2 much higher? Not only that but at metacritic gears of war and MGS4 have the same score and GoW2 is only 1% lower.



Turkish says and I'm allowed to quote that: Uncharted 3 and God Of War 3 look better than Unreal Engine 4 games will or the tech demo does. Also the Naughty Dog PS3 ENGINE PLAYS better than the UE4 ENGINE.

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FishyJoe on 30 November 2008

We know that a game like Heavenly Sword costs $25 million, since that was stated from the producer of the game. You can scale on that by time and staffing. You won't get an exact number, but a ballpark figure is reasonable.



shanbcn on 30 November 2008
Zim said:
Because 60million is a reasonable estimate. The original budget for the game was set at $30million, we know that. It has been delayed constantly and more people hired on so that budget has clearly increased.

And shanbcn let me see if I have this straight more people anticipate MGS4 than GoW? Then why are the sales of GoW 1 and soon to be 2 much higher? Not only that but at metacritic gears of war and MGS4 have the same score and GoW2 is only 1% lower.

 

COD sell more then Gears while releasing every year. I didn't meant by sales, read the post again.

MGS4 passed 4 million in SEP Konami reports and will surly pass 5 million by next year. And in terms of hype and anticipation Gears doesn't even come close to MGS4.



rhisc on 30 November 2008

Long time lurker on the site but I'll add this interview with the maker of Crackdown.

David Jones: I think it's also just being realistic. It's easy for some people to underestimate what it really takes these days to produce a great game. It's certainly true of the retail market in online as well.

So we're very resolute, we know what it takes, we know how much it costs, and we don't kid ourselves that it's going to take anything less.

Just sticking to that principle, not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, both internally within the company and with investors, saying yes, it is a lot of money, but truly that's what it takes.

Unfortunately these days it does take that amount. Crackdown wasn't that long ago and our development budget was something like USD 20 million*, and even that to me now, I don't know if I could do anything for much less than that.

You've got the Call of Dutys, GTA IV – some challenging stuff to try and beat out there, or at least set a bar equal to that.

 





Seneque on 30 November 2008
rhisc said:

Long time lurker on the site but I'll add this interview with the maker of Crackdown.

David Jones: I think it's also just being realistic. It's easy for some people to underestimate what it really takes these days to produce a great game. It's certainly true of the retail market in online as well.

So we're very resolute, we know what it takes, we know how much it costs, and we don't kid ourselves that it's going to take anything less.

Just sticking to that principle, not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes, both internally within the company and with investors, saying yes, it is a lot of money, but truly that's what it takes.

Unfortunately these days it does take that amount. Crackdown wasn't that long ago and our development budget was something like USD 20 million*, and even that to me now, I don't know if I could do anything for much less than that.

You've got the Call of Dutys, GTA IV – some challenging stuff to try and beat out there, or at least set a bar equal to that.

 

Thanks, that's useful.

It would be interesting to have a thread where we could store this kind of information when we get them. The 'How many copies are needed to be sold for a game to break even' is a pretty frequent asked question. To have these quotes and links regrouped somewhere would be practical.



Griffin on 30 November 2008
Zim said:
Because 60million is a reasonable estimate. The original budget for the game was set at $30million, we know that. It has been delayed constantly and more people hired on so that budget has clearly increased.

Please show this proof that KZ2 was delayed constantly, the game was set for 2008 holiday and this was said during summer 2007 in some interview with a GG developer. The game was delayed 3months to not face off with other titles based on what Sony said.

 

Some high up Sony person bsasically said they need to sell one mil copies on the AAA games to make money, and i think he used the cash sums of 20-30mil.