^ for 3rd party maybe.

3rd parties devs arent the same as the publisher (till you get to the big guys like SE) they also have to pay royalties just for being on the system and also licensing fees

Why do 360 people make these threads? It's just annoying. They must be really happy to show a game not sold 1 million in America yet. KZ2 will reach it soon hopfully sometime this year.

Why is no one taking the distributor into account for these cost breakdowns? Sony [MS/Nintendo] doesn't distribute the games themselves. Retailers purchase from a distributor, not the publisher directly. The distributor can sometimes take a bigger cut than the retailer can depending on retailer and the contract negotiated.

Because that would make sense?  When most arguments in this thread are "KZ2 is good so it's a success sales wise"

I found what I was looking for, and it seems my memory was off a bit.

http://www.capcom-unity.com/ask_capcom/go/thread/view/7371/13078821/Zack__Wiki_didnt_make_money?num=10&pg=1

BengaBenga (the same one as on this site) states that Forbes has estimated that a publisher gets approx $28 for a $60 game. I would assume that it is a little higher for first party publishers and a little lower for second party publishers. That is due to the licensing fees that are charged to third party publishers.

So, assuming $30 (could be more like $31-$33) per game and 2 million copies shipped, that means somewhere around $60 million in revenue for Killzone 2. That would mean that it is a profitable game.

^ but your forgeting sony isnt just the publisher.

What are you saying?

Ignore him. You covered it in your post. You said that first party publishers earn a little more than the average.

^ there is a difference between somthing like MS publishing NG2 or Sony publishing Lair/WKC and somthing like MS publishing Halo 3 or Fable2 or Sony publishing KZ2 or Uncharted

How exactly? The money that would go to the developers (like Level 5, Tecmo, or Lair) is the same as it would go to Bungie, Naughty Dog, etc.