For a game like uncharted, anyone know how many sales would be needed in order to break even? It's seems to be a game with high production values so it must be one of the more expensive games out there.

2 million sales sounds too little to me in order to have broken even.

Let's assume Sony got $15 from each copy, so that would have made them $30m, and for a game that only took 2 years in full production, with a further year of pre-production, from quite a small studio, that is certainly a good return, though I can't find figures for the cost

Well pretty good for Uncharted then and assume the second to sell much better thanks to the first getting a pretty big fanbase. Games like GT5 must have budgets of about $60 million or even more but then again the prologue must have paid for 40% of the budget by now.

Uncharted wont have a budget anywhere near that, that is probably the budget of MGS 4, which took forever to make and would have cost far more. That budget of $60m would have been 50% greater than that of FF XIII which took 5 years and was a huge game. GT 5 would have been expensive, but nothing like that

Didn't Konami once said MGS4 needs to sell 1 million copies to break even?

1m day 1!

Even if Sony got $10 for evey copy of GT5: Prologue sold that means they haave made well over $20 million now, it would very well be near paying the full development costs of the game. All the GT5 sales could be profit so even if the rest of the first party games sold like crap (so uncharted 2, GOW 3, TRICO) it would easily cover the development costs of those games.

It simple does not add up, no way are Sony selling any of there firsty party studios. If anything they will continue to expand there firsty party studios, Sony make much more money on firsty party compared to third.

Will god of war 3 get the sales to justify its budget though?

@colonelstubbs

ofcourse it will....even if it doesn't GT5 can support its failure with the money it brings in.

yeah GT5 is a beast, all the firsty party games can fail and Sony have PD to save there asses. But come on, we all know Uncharted 2, GOW 3, TRICO, Infamous etc wont fail.