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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
shanbcn said:
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.

Gears didn't have the same level of hype only because the first game was more recent than MGS3 and MGS4 was, and still is, the only major 3rd party exclusive for on PS3.

 



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

 

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shanbcn on 30 November 2008
Godot said:
shanbcn said:
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.

Gears didn't have the same level of hype only because the first game was more recent than MGS3 and MGS4 was, and still is, the only major 3rd party exclusive for on PS3.

 

 

Name one 3rd party 360 exclusive on par with MGS4 even after being 1 year longer in market. MS published 2 Gears games so 3rd one might be multi. MS is doing wrong by publishing the games and not owning the IP, this mean that sequels can be on other consoles also.



el_rika on 30 November 2008

This thread is slowly going to hell, that's all i'm saying.



"You have the right to the remains of a silent attorney"

Godot on 30 November 2008
shanbcn said:
Godot said:
shanbcn said:
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.

Gears didn't have the same level of hype only because the first game was more recent than MGS3 and MGS4 was, and still is, the only major 3rd party exclusive for on PS3.

 

 

Name one 3rd party 360 exclusive on par with MGS4 even after being 1 year longer in market. MS published 2 Gears games so 3rd one might be multi. MS is doing wrong by publishing the games and not owning the IP, this mean that sequels can be on other consoles also.

Well, Gears of War is on par with MGS. Both have about the same level of popularity.

Anyway, if Microsoft want Gears of War 3 to be exclusive, it will be exclusive. If they don't want to pay, it will be multiplatform. Anyway, it has little to do with the thread. If we can say anything about the thread is that Gears generated much more profit than MGS.



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

 

rhisc on 30 November 2008
Seneque said:
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.

 

Here is another interesting story from Forbes that shows the breakdown of where your $60 dollars goes.  Basically 20% or $12 goes to the retailer and 11.5% or $7 goes to the console owner (ie Sony, MS, Nintendo).  The rest appear to be estimates.

Here is an interesting quote from the story:

For the companies that do put next-generation titles out early, making a profit is tough. Namco Bandai president Takeo Takasu said his company needs to sell at least 500,000 copies of each PlayStation 3 game it creates to make a profit. Analysts predict that some other publishers will need to clear 1 million units to get in the black--and start making about $1 per game sold.





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Godot on 30 November 2008
rhisc said:
Seneque said:
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.

 

Here is another interesting story from Forbes that shows the breakdown of where your $60 dollars goes.  Basically 20% or $12 goes to the retailer and 11.5% or $7 goes to the console owner (ie Sony, MS, Nintendo).  The rest appear to be estimates.

Here is an interesting quote from the story:

For the companies that do put next-generation titles out early, making a profit is tough. Namco Bandai president Takeo Takasu said his company needs to sell at least 500,000 copies of each PlayStation 3 game it creates to make a profit. Analysts predict that some other publishers will need to clear 1 million units to get in the black--and start making about $1 per game sold.

If that figures for the cost breakdown of a game is accurate, we could calculate the numbers of copies they need to sell for each game to break even for those we know the development cost (those that were stated in this thread).



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

 

DMeisterJ on 30 November 2008

Crackdown more expensive than Gears?



Zim on 30 November 2008

So Shanbcn how do you measure hype then? Since apparently it isn't with sales. Is it purely the tiny core segment of the market that post on sites like these? Because surely high initial sales mean high hype. Seems to me you just consider the tiny core segement of the market as the only ones who get hyped. They aren't. When adverts start running on TV that's when casual gamers get hyped.

Oh and Griffin proof KZ2 was constantly delayed? A trailer was shown in 2005... by the time the game is actually released it will have been almost 4 years between the first trailer and actual release. If 4 years between trailer and release isn't a sign of constant delays I don't know what is. Especially when you consider this isn't a huge epic game, it is a shooter (that even lacks co-op). Even twilight princess was only 3 years between trailer and launch.

Other games shown at the same time as KZ2, motorstorm and Lair. Motorstorm will have been on sale for 2 years by the time KZ2 is released and has already had a sequel. Lair will have been on sale for 1 and a half years.



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.

rhisc on 30 November 2008
DMeisterJ said:
Crackdown more expensive than Gears?

 

The original Gears was an exception.  The $10 million doesn't include the cost of the Unreal Engine plus they had an effecient group of 20 to 30 people working on it for only 2 years.  Also they outsourced parts to China.  It doesn't seem unreasonalble that an average game would cost $20 million once you figure in the cost to develop/license an engine as well as considering most games will take 3 years to develop with a team of 100 people.

 

All the info was gleaned here:

10 Million Dollar Tab for Gears of War

Have the great expenses of next-gen development been exaggerated?

October 5, 2006 | 10:52 PM PST

Last year, Mark Rain of Epic Games criticized publishers such as Electronic Arts for exaggerating the costs of next-generation game development and "going around trying to scare people" into paying more for games.

Speaking at the London Games Summit, Rein explained that it's taken a team of 20 to 30 people around two years and approximately 10 million dollars to complete work on GOW, and that the game serves as evidence that its entirely possible for developers to make impressive next-generation content with only medium sized teams and a fairly reasonable budget. Rein insisted that the horror stories of 100-person teams and gigantic, 20 to 30 million dollar budgets were way off base.

Rein did make sure to note that since the game was running off of Epic Games' own proprietary Unreal Engine 3, their budget did not include the cost such a middleware engine would cost to other developers. Apparently, they also saved a hefty sum of money by outsourcing to the recently established subsidiary, Epic Games China - another luxury many developers and publishers dont have.

Despite the apparently reasonable budget that Gears of War has been developed under, Microsoft is still retailing the game for now standard $59.99 price tag.




Godot on 30 November 2008
rhisc said:
DMeisterJ said:
Crackdown more expensive than Gears?

 

The original Gears was an exception.  The $10 million doesn't include the cost of the Unreal Engine plus they had an effecient group of 20 to 30 people working on it for only 2 years.  Also they outsourced parts to China.  It doesn't seem unreasonalble that an average game would cost $20 million once you figure in the cost to develop/license an engine as well as considering most games will take 3 years to develop with a team of 100 people.

 

All the info was gleaned here:

10 Million Dollar Tab for Gears of War

Have the great expenses of next-gen development been exaggerated?

October 5, 2006 | 10:52 PM PST

Last year, Mark Rain of Epic Games criticized publishers such as Electronic Arts for exaggerating the costs of next-generation game development and "going around trying to scare people" into paying more for games.

Speaking at the London Games Summit, Rein explained that it's taken a team of 20 to 30 people around two years and approximately 10 million dollars to complete work on GOW, and that the game serves as evidence that its entirely possible for developers to make impressive next-generation content with only medium sized teams and a fairly reasonable budget. Rein insisted that the horror stories of 100-person teams and gigantic, 20 to 30 million dollar budgets were way off base.

Rein did make sure to note that since the game was running off of Epic Games' own proprietary Unreal Engine 3, their budget did not include the cost such a middleware engine would cost to other developers. Apparently, they also saved a hefty sum of money by outsourcing to the recently established subsidiary, Epic Games China - another luxury many developers and publishers dont have.

Despite the apparently reasonable budget that Gears of War has been developed under, Microsoft is still retailing the game for now standard $59.99 price tag.

And yet that guy in this thread didn't one to admit that Epic are more efficient than Square Enix to make a game because a RPG is much more complex to make than a shooter.



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