Now i read on this link that the average ps3 game costs 8.6 million dollars to make...

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Average_PS3_game_needs_to_sell_at_LEAST_500_000_copies_to_make_a_profit

But does anyeon know or care to estimate the production of big budget games such as uncharted or ratchet and clank? There are no real facts on google so i was wondering if anyone can take a educated guess?

Uncharted cost $20M to develop according to Naughty Dog. Ratchet and Clank was probably less, around $15M I would guess.

and for instance, uncharted has sold over 2.3 million copies, how many would it have to have sold to turn a profit?

Isnt Killzone 2 about $50 million or so?

You got to factor in that the 20mil and 15 mil budget does not account for advertisement. The 20mil and 15mil is the development cost. Advertisement is seperate and avg 10mil to 20mil for avg game low end to higher end 20mil. A lot of people seem to forget the advertising and distribution cost which are not factored in the development cost.

Not sure about Killzone 2 cost, but i expect sony would probably spend anywhere from 20mil and up for the distribution and advertisement.  Not sure but i thought i saw once that a while back that killzone was approaching 60mil development cost.

 Yeah i can see how that fits into the prospective of budget. However, Sony rarely advertises anything these days, other then the commericals for Christmas this yr. I think i saw may be 1 walmart commercial last year for Uncharted.

True i did not see much advertisement for uncharted.  I think i saw maybe one on tv during primetime hour not sure, but a commercial on primetime hour alone is roughly 1 mil to be put on, not including the cost for labor to make the comercial.  So even if not much is advertise just 1 comercial alone in prime time will cost 1 mil.  Anything in magazine and newspaper are a lot less of course., but the catch is if u have advertisement in different magazines, newspapers, and flyers in different states and countries they all add up.  If the retailers advertise the product on their own thats a bonus since no cost to the publisher.

We know that GTA4 was 100 million and Lost Planet little over 20 million to make. Those are afaik the only two specific numbers we have for this gen.

MGS4 is estimated around 50 million, Killzone is rumoured to be 65 million. This is likely including advertising.

On average 20-30 dollars of a game go to the publisher, but for first party games there are no licensing fees, so this is $8 per sold game higher for PS3 for Sony published titles.

So GTA4's break even point was 3.3-4 million units, Lost Planet 700k-1 million. Be aware that break even is a bad result for a company, I think a return on investment of 20% is the lower end of success.

MGS4 must have given Konami a very tidy profit then. GT5 is most definitely the most expensive first party game, dont even need numbers when I know PD is huge and the game has been in production for years. Sony cater to every whim and need of PD as well most probably, cant blame them after what they have done. I doubt Killzone 2 will ever make a profit but that game seems to be a "look at what the PS3 can do" game and simply establishes Guerrilla as a major first party.

Home is what I am most interested in, any estimations on how much that cost to make?