Hello

It seems to me that a lot of you over estimate retail profits or it is just that my shop is doing very bad business... For my part on a full price game, we make a profit of 15% of the Ex VTA Price.

Bye.

Bodhesatva said: vizunary said: wow, i didn't think SH would cost that much... i'll buy it when it hit's $49, that means it's only a $25 game if you figure in the movie... i've got a fetish for HD movies as it is, hehe... i don't think it'll flop though, but it won't be making anyone rich, either. @bods, super stardust HD is a better game though, LOL Definitely true, I'd love to try Super Stardust :p I just mean in terms of production costs: clearly both are simple games (simple isn't necessarily bad, SSD looks great) that didn't take 100 programmers 2 years to make.Â

SSHD is definitely awesome, on my 50" it really "pops," hard to describe the visuals(and the gameplay is amazing in it's simplicity, not easy though) you gotta have at least one buddy with a PS3. i'll definitely be getting SH eventually, a decent game with a badass movie, awesome combo... i like to play "The Warriors" (PS2) then after i get to the assassination watch the movie, it's a great experience. anyone else like tying their gaming to film... another one is playing Oblivion for a couple hours then watching kingdom of heaven or king arthur. i'll definitely play Stranglehold then watch Hardboiled, perfect tie in =)

There's all kinds of games that are "bomba" this generation. The games cost more to create and the higher retail prices are not offsetting the production costs. Products on consoles with high graphical requirements are more costly and may need to sell over a million copies to be considered a success or to even break even. The costs of development for this generation of non-portable consoles will almost inevitably lead to another round of consolidation for third parties.

Bodhesatva said: I think we're in the process of seeing the first major financial disaster of this new generation in Stranglehold. Thare are three things that drive sales, I think: 1) Hype and press 2) Great reviews 3) Word of mouth Heavenly Sword and especially Lair are two recent games that may not sell enormously well because of their good-but-not-great and bad reviews (respectively), but they both have a lot of hype and console exclusives always get some buzz simply for that reason alone. But thus far, Stranglehold has none of this. It didn't get a lot of hype (comparatively, of course) and it's getting okay to pretty good reviews (75 on metacritic), and is multiplatform, which tends to cut down on the buzz -- unless word of mouth becomes amazingly positive, I think we could be looking at the first major dud of this new, extremely expensive era. According to Midway, the game cost 25 million+ dollars to produce, which is two and a half times as much as Twilight Princess cost, as an example.

 I could be wrong, but wasn't Virtua Fighter 5 a gigantic flop for Sega? 

On PS3, sure, but that game has been making profits via the arcade for a long time ago.

Sega's in a rather cozy position this generation compared to a lot of other third parties. They didn't put their eggs in one basket. They spread themselves out across the consoles, putting a solid line up on each of them, and have been getting some solid returns. Their doing handhelds, PCs, made loads of awesome acquisitions and smart publishing decisions, they are making the best game for Nintendo's big new peripheral this holiday (Ghost Squad and Wii Zapper), they have a guaranteed huge money maker in the form of Mario and Sonic, and if all else fails in the home market they still have a thriving arcade business in Japan.

I'd say Sega's probably in one of the best positions of any publisher this generation, as they have a diverse line up of products on a diverse amount of hardware, they are kings of the arcade scene, and they have at least two garunteed multi million sellers in the form of Mario and Sonic at the Olympics on Wii and DS (which got a very positive showing at GC, I might). If they could just make a good Sonic game and not screw up NiGHTS (coming in 2008) they should be good.

Edit: Ouch, can't believe how much I just rambled. I really shouldn't surf the web when I'm drowsy. But hey, if anyone feels this warrents further discussion, we could make a new topic.

I totatlly agree , I dont see this game passing more than 800,000 copys during its lifetime . Shure , it could be a silent killer , but seeing the discussion absence and the reviews that youl see only in the darkest corners of sites ... well they are not good signs . If they invested that ammount of money , than why wouldent they promote it batter ?

I also agree with Stof ... look at The darkness ... many people praised it for its good quality , but its still far from passing the 500k :(

Well I've got my PS3 version pre-order in =/

Mainly for Hardboiled mind, and I'm the hugest Chow Yun Fat/John Woo fan.

Did The Darkness really do that bad?

darkness sold 225K on the 360 and about 125k on the PS3 in the U.S, has not shown very strong legs though. Sales are in the sub 5K/week for both the versions.
In E.U the PS3 version got a delayed release.
on Chartrack darkness showed some strong legs for a few weeks, it still is in the PS3 fullprice chart. Maybe 250K X360&PS3 in E.U would give it 550-600K WW on all platforms.

I thought a developer said that they need to sell 500k on 20mil projects, 500k is not very much over the life of a game, so that means that Killzone2 only needs to sell 1mil to make money which seems very easy. Games like RFoM have sold 2mil WW, and Motorstorm has sold over 1mil.