I think you've got your understanding a little mucked up.

1st of all, LBP would not have made a profit off of 250K units sold.  Games that cost $5,000,000 to make back in the PS2/GC/xbox generation (Big budget) required 250K units to sell before making a profit...  Average costing PS3/360 games are bound to be more towards the 400/500K units sold before hitting the profit mark (with Wii being the acception for having PS2/GC/Xbox development costs).

2.  A full priced $60 sale does not = $60 profit for Sony ------ 250K units x $60 = $15,000,000 Revenue at retail.
---Firstly, you need to take out any Tax, take out any Retail profit, Take out shipping and packaging expenses, costs of production of physical media (Blu Ray Disk) etc.  How much money did they loose on the World Wide recall back before it got released?  How many games where destroyed?  (When they had to remove those lyrics?  - they also would have had to destroy every blu-ray disk that had already been pressed).

3.  How long was LBP in development for?  How much did the staff get paid PER YEAR, that LBP was in development?  How much more did the Boss' and managers get paid?  Just because the developer has a staff of 25 employees does not mean that they did not pay contractors for their work... sound engeniers, outsourced 3d artists... etc.  In otherwords do you even know how much LBP actually cost???!@!#!@# 

 4.  and lastly for the big one,  you do realise that even your basic advertising costs MILLIONS of dollars?  Hell, even 1 x 30 second add at a superbowl game costs more then $1,000,000... and that's just for 1 x 30 second add.  Now of course LBP wasn't advertised at the superbowl but perhaps knowing now that even just 1 x 30 second add can cost over 1 million dollars in certain situations, this might just give you a little perspective of how much advertising does cost. not to mention world wide advertising.  Here in Australia, 1 x 30 second add at 11pm at night costs AUS$10,000... if you want 1 x 30 Add during mainstreem veiwing your looking towards the AUS $100,000 mark.  Suprise, it costs money to advertise!

I mean, don't get me wronge, LBP is an awsome game and is for sure generating a profit for Sony, but to the contrary of just 250K sales, I think it's more like 400-500K before they started making profit over their costs.

I'm not sure Sony would be too quick to say they are making a profit and by how much. If they were making 100+ a console in profit that would only fuel the fire for a price reduction. If they keep saying it is selling at a loss or break even then it is perceived as expensive tech and deserves its price point regardless of the fact it is expensive. I think Sony wants to keep the price right were it is for as long as possible. It is still selling very well and will continue to do so with there upcoming lineup of games. That said, we will probably have some sort of reduction in price by years end. I expect 100 by christmas. So $399 bundles with possible $299 regulars. Maybe they will go with 160GB for $399 and 80GB for $299.

Step 1: Release PlayStation 3.

Step 2: ?????

Step 3: Profit!


This was a huge lol

if playstation goes down where will microsoft get all its ideas from?

dude, "Hip Hop Gamer"? that's Soulja Boy's turf. XD

1/2. no really... it probablly made profit for MM at 250k. I know 60 dollars doesnt go to the developers but I know 27 dollars does. With my statistics Killzone2 would need to sell 1.3 million copies to become profitable. That sounds about right to me. But since Killzone has a bigger staff and has been around longer I'd say they get paid more than MM and bump it to closer to 1.5 million copies...

LBP - was far from big budget and again, with my math it would have been about 7million game. 2 million dollars more than a big budget ps2 game. again that sounds about right.

3. this is MM's first game. Average developer gets paid 100k a year. But for a first time studio I doubt they are paying average salary. Think of it this way, you own a ma and pa resturaunt. you hire people. Will you start them off at 9 dollars an hour that giodanos starts people or would you pay minimum wage at 7.50? smart answer min wage.

4. sony covered adverising

you over estimate the 400/500k number. that would be closer to the profit line for a game like... WKC.

How do you estimate the costing of LBP?

I'm estimating it to cost a lot more....

Yes I'll take it that it pays it's employees a little less then $100K a year ( Even it's management)... I think it's quite a bit more on average but I'll give this one to you.

How many years was LBP actually in development for?

Are you Stating that they did not pay outside sources for development? I know many games big and small budget also purchase content/coding from external sources... these external sources are not counted as employees thus cost is added ontop of employee's wages. Do you know for sure that they didn't use external sources?

Are you making a well educated guess through research of costing into LBP or are you just making up that $7 million dollar figure because you think it sounds about right? What info/recourses did you use to conclude your figure? I've tried doing research on it and am finding it difficult to reach the $7 million dollar mark.

When has Hiphopgamer ever been right?

From what i've seen he's never been right.

If they outsourced it it was to sony who probablly covered all costs. (Sony was very involved with this project)

Thanks "hip hop gamer", it's good to know that Sony is doing fine. Those layoffs must have been a dream