If you look at the credits associated with MadWorld there are (approximately) 50 or 60 people who worked on the game, and (based on their job description) about half of these people would be shared resources or contractors for a short period of the project ... If I was to ball-park the development cost I would put it between $3 Million and $9 Million, and I expect it would be fairly close to the middle of that range; it is difficult to make a more accurate estimate without knowing more about the project.

Now, I'm not certain whether Sega has turned a profit off of MadWorld yet but I also don't think the 250,000+ sales that Sega made to retailers is really that bad considering its development costs ... It would (probably) be very similar (or better than) return on investment as Valkyria Chronicles, Yakuza 3, and could possibly be a similar return to Condemned 2: Bloodshot if the development costs were low enough. At the same time, it has (certainly) been a better investment for Sega than Stormrise, Golden Axe: Beast Rider, The Club, and (at least) 1/3 to 1/2 of all of Sega's HD console games.

To put it another way ...

MadWorld's sales are probably not that great, but they certainly fall within the range of a new IP that underperformed rather than the "Major Flop" that a lot of people portray it as. Most publishers have thrown far more money at projects on the HD consoles than Sega threw at MadWorld that sold far worse than MadWorld, and one of the main reasons why MadWorld is brought up is because it was a higher profile game on the web.

This is the saddest thread i have ever read, give it up folks, stop looking for excuses. Many games bomb all the times in all consoles. Why is it so hard to accept, it's not that serious.

didn't Overkill developer said that they are planning a sequel and they are happy with Sega bout the sales - at that time there was only 200k copies sold.

none of you know how much it cost to make these games, so i don't where the profit excuse comes from. As far as sales goes, very disapointing numbers though.

I said that even though they did not sell amazingly well (Did not have shocking sales) they sold enough to ensure profit.

I thought my estimate was fairly reasonable ...

With that said, I don't think you can say that MadWorld was a bomb unless you're willing to admit that Valkyria Chronicles and Yakuza 3 (Sega's biggest PS3 titles) were also bombs.

Do you honestly think Madworld cost less than half the price of Valkyria Chronicles, even with the fact that Madworld actually got advertising?

You think I CARE to say that Sega's title's are bombs, Valkyria sold poorly to begin with, but it's picking up slowly. Yakuza 3, i don't now though, it's been released in JAPAN only right.

we'll see about that after 2 years

and also, the loss of money from developers is mostly from HD projects, like EA last year

and from the moment SEGA said they are satisfied with sales, you can't say they bombed, either you like the sales or not

I know that a game well advertised, a good game by most sold 200k. That's a bomb sir....