Haze was published by Ubisoft, Sony published Lair. Both games were reviewed poorly because lair was uncontrollable and Haze seemed half assed. Thats the major difference between those two games and Heavy Rain.

Since Sony is publishing Heavy Rain if the game does not make a lot of money then Sony sees the most out of the losses and The developer alot less.

My point is that QD has their own survival in their hands, just like F5 and FR did.  They should have another project in the works already.  If Heavy Rain flops, sure that'll be a mar on their record.  But their survival shouldn't depend on it.  Their survival depends upon their business practices.  

If Heavy Rain gets bad reviews, that will hurt future contracts... but like I said, they should already have new contracts signed by the time it ships.

Lots of advertising will help, but they are using expensive technology and have a team of 200, so this game is going to need to sell well, and I don't think it is going to make Sony much money...

You partially blamed Lair's failure on its lack of advertising. That's not the case.

Advertising isn't going to make Heavy Rain succeed. It needs to be appealing to people on its own merits. We're all holding our breath and crossing our fingers for it, but it's far from a sure thing.

Yes, they did put it into perspective, but in a more important way:

If Heavy Rain bombs, Quantic Dream will either have to start making much smaller and cheaper projects or choke to death on their inability to make another game like this for a long time. It won't need to be a direct financial blow to knock them down.

It would be a shame if it flopped sales wise. The game looks like a real gem.

@ OP
Scoring in the high 70's is not "well recieved", which is also what Mirror's Edge happened to score. I would translate that to something like "decent, but flawed".

Personally, I think that Heavy Rain has much greater potential than Haze or Mirror's Edge ever had.
Haze failed because it was a shooter that wasn't up to par with the rest of the shooters available. Mirror's Edge had that danger of going platforming in 1st person, and it didn't work well enough to merit high scores.

Heavy Rain is, like so many other games, geared towards an adult audience, which we know is a demographic already showing a strong presence on the PS3. So if this game is well advertised, while at the same time actually being good, somebody who fits the demographic going into a game store to see if there is anything for them might see a bunch of action heavy games and Heavy Rain. And if they remember the commercials (if these aren't shitty commercials that is), then they might just go "Oh hey, that was that good but different game right? Heck, I'll try it just for the sake of it."

Of course, this is a very optimistic scenario, and probably wont happen very often, but if they can stamp the commercials with those comments and scores from various reviewers (provided they are good) and still make the commercials good, then this might just be a success for Sony and QD.

Lair did some 300K in US ,100K in Japan and we dont know the European numbers.It wasnt exactly a mega-flop considering it can have reached the 500K mark.

Haze did worse but its at 225K+ in US alone and it sold decently(for a western FPS thats it )in Japan.Again ,we dont know EU numbers ...but it must be close to 500K too.

Konami said that you needed some 500K sales to justify a HD game so those games pretty much did break even .

And at least Factor 5 was supported by Sony and the game was funded and distrubuted by SOny as a first party (well ,second party ) game.

PS3-haters just cant make their mind about these things.If its a PS3 exclusive is because Sony has paid for it or funded it ,but later on if it doesnt have a high success you change your mind and Sony didnt put a penny and the studio will fall because of it so no other studio should make PS3 exclusives.Your hathred is soo aparent .

As for Heavy Rain ,its funded and will be published by Sony ,Quantic Dreams will receive the money they need or have asked for and royalties over sales and that will be it .These kind of developments are the most secure for game developers .

Another thing is that ,if the game sucks royally (Haze didnt suck royally ,but it was a 65%-70% game in a genre with a lot of AAA games ,and Lair was an original game with tricky controls that was patched later on and is a good game in its own merits)you wont get too many new contracts and that can hurt you .

I don't really agree with your notion that Sony has anything to do with Factor 5/Free Radical's demise. Haze has outsold Too Human and TH cost twice as much as Haze. Is Silicon Knights going out of business?

I do agree that Heavy Rain seems to be a niche title that with an enormous development budget. I find it hard to believe it will make any money, but I expect it to be a great game.

I see both this and Alan Wake not doing "great"

however both seem to be in a position where the pubisher is most at risk, so I do see a Free Rad or Factor 5 coming from either 2 of these companies.