That is somewhat attenuated by the fact that HD console games retail for more.

I think the consensus is that publisher get around 25$ per HD console game sold once you remove the retailer, distributor, licence fee and such.

Seeing how Wii games retail for 10$ less you would expect publisher to only get 17$ or so per Wii game sold ( I'm guessing Licencing fee and distribution are the same, retailers probably get a slightly smaller cut).

Which would mean that each HD console game sold generate 1.5 times the money than a Wii game does for a publisher...

The game you listed are all 1st or second parties so actually do not have licencing fee too so they probably generated 35$ per copy sold, that is double what a Wii third party generates....

Damn. I read through this entire thread and it never crossed my mind that BMaker was being serious. I saw this post and I came to this reply page to type out something along the lines of: "He was being sarcastic!"

Then I had a moment of doubt, went back to re-read the thread, and came back to this page with a very different outlook on what everyone has said so far.

I can't believe BMaker was being serious. X_x

It's funny.

A lot of the Kotaku commentators came to the conclusion that it must be an error because it makes no sense.

Except (of course) that Licencing fees are not the same across consoles ...

I remember seeing an article soon after the launch of the PS3 where a publisher was claiming that, even though the retail price of a PS3/XBox 360 game went up by $10 they were only seeing a couple more dollars per unit than they got on a PS2 game ... At the same time it was rumoured that Nintendo reduced their licencing fee on the Wii (compared to their Gamecube licencing fee which was a couple of dollars more than the PS2's licencing fee) to attract greater third party support.

In other words, it is entirely possible that a publisher only makes a couple of dollars more per game by publishing for a Wii game ...

Anyways, the point of my post was not to get into a realistic argument about the success of those games ... In reality using a 1 Million sales figure works really well for games similar to a lot of the games Nintendo has produced (Mario Galaxy, Twilight Princess, Super Paper Mario, Mario Kart) but is very inaccruate when you look at a lot of third party games which had a much smaller development budget and a tiny fraction of the marketing budget.

Quick note about the profits comment.

Let's say a game cost $10M to develop, advertise, and publish. This does not mean that if it makes $11M in revenue that a $1M profit has been turned. A publisher's portfolio doesn't work like that. Games that make it to market not only fund their own development cost, but also fund all the publisher's other business activities such as:

-games in development

-other games on market that have not recouped dev costs

-cost of running business.

-and 100s of other things

In other words, revenue has alot of operating expenses to pay for before profit is generated. Reggie can fairly say that atleast $50M (1M * $50) in revenue is needed to turn a profit even if a game cost <$10M to make, publish, and advertise. That other $40M well cover operating costs and deficiets incurred by the publisher before profit is made.  

I seem to recollect articles claiming that the licencing fee on HD consoles are around 10$ for a full price game ( I have no clue if it's a percentage of the retail price or not, I would guess so or you woudn't see brand new games like Legendary retailing at 40$ from day one).

So any idea what the fee is like for a Wii game ?

LOL I took the time to check the first link and said huh? Then I had to check the rest. Funny how people might miss the joke just by replying to your post without looking at the links

@Outlaw: I was talking about the total sales of 3rd party games.

@Khuutra: Yes... It's odd since it's Kotaku we're talking about.

@Ail: I believe the split depends on the game. If developer and the publisher is the same instance, and to an extent, if there's no different distributor, more money goes to dev/publisher, since it doesn't need to turn profit to every time a copy is forwarded.
I'd recall that SMG was sold to retailers for 35€ (we had a thread about it) and licencing is about 10€, that would leave about 25€ to split between developer and publisher.

@BMaker: I don't know where the million comes from (on a side note, i laughed at Kotaku pointing out how many games sold a million according to NPD, dissing the rest of the world).
If we use Ails estimation, the game (marketing included) should cost 17 million and using my estimation, the game should cost 25 million, for it to brake even at million copies sold. Also, it's worth noticing that 3rd party games tend to be more expensive than 1st party games, when the 3rd party gets more money per unit sold.
Then there are games released at a budget price, which, according to Nintendo, gets a discount on licence fee.

Naturally, 3rd parties price their product by themselves, when we can't say that the dev/publisher gets "this much" from each copy sold and if they are using an outsides intellectual property, they need to pay the licence for the IP (whether it's a one-time cost or a certain percentage out of each unit or both). Also the possible cost for 3rd party engine has to be taken into consideration too.

The million copies sold seems like a high number, but Reggie may have been talking about averages for 1st party games, that generally are quite heavily marketed.