Are we still in denial that producing a game with the graphical quality people expect from HD console games cost 3 to 4 times as much as a similar PS2/Wii game does?

when you can provide me evidence of this unknown profit then I can assure you this thread is purely based on hope.

It doesn't seem that unreasonable to me at all to think that: leaving aside the HD vs. SD aspect, VC was made by a team whose history includes high-profile hits (the Sakura Wars series, which spawned its own cafe), while Madworld was the side-project of a new studio. VC has an anime in the works (much like Sakura Wars) and had its own advertising campaign (it's even had a new campaign recently, especially in Japan). It's clear that there were fairly high hopes pinned on VC, especially in comparison to Madworld, and I'd be stunned if the costs didn't reflect that.

Yakuza 3 made profit - Sega confirmed that so how come Madworld didn't when budget of this game was probably less than 1/4 of Yakuza 3 budget. Overkill had also very small budget.
both games had budgets probably simillar to No More Heroes and that made huge profit considering they throw big party after it sold 300k. both games are selling 5-6.5k a week now so they should hit at least 400k each LTD.
if NMHs 400k is enough for Suda51 to make a sequel than you know they earned a lot.

Lets hope not. But what I always find amusing is that games that "flop" on Wii are always magnified where as games that "flop" or underperform on HD consoles are marginalized.

My idea of it bombing has always been on sales since that's really the only aspect we got some decent info on. The developers don't tell us how much these games cost them. I have only seen this making a profit excuse this generation because it's the pefect way to cover bad sales of a game we expect some good volumes from.

I don't think those two games bombed, but no one can say they sold really well.

These two games were supposed to be proof that mature games do have a place on Wii, but the sales numbers aren't exactly encouraging to new developers.

And I know the most common argument as to why mature Wii games don't sell as much as HD is that they don't get enough advertisement, but I saw ads on TV for both HotD, and MadWorld. And if I see an ad for a Wii game here in Canada, I know that the publisher has a decent amount of advertising.

And TC, you have no idea how much the budgets were, or the price retailers paid (I really think it would be less than $30).

From what I have heard, the developer and publisher get about 45% of the retail value of the game. How that money is then split between them varies from game to game.

As for your example, since Killzone 2 was a first party game, we'll say Sony gets all of that 45%. So it goes like this:

$60 x 0.45 = $27

$27 x 1.69 million = $45.63 million

Game development for Killzone 2 was rumored to be as low as $30 million to as high as $60 million. There was an article posted on the forums ( http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=58720 ) that said that advertising for the game was £2 million ($3.3 million according to Google) in the UK alone. That means that worldwide, advertising for this game was likely in the multi-million dollar range.

So what I'm trying to say, is that Sony spent a lot of money on this game. I would guess that by the time it stops selling, Sony will have made some money on this game, but not very much.

Also, I doubt it is the games that are hurting Sony's gaming division. It is much more likely to be the hardware.

... The question is why are these games the ones that have to prove "Mature" games can sell on the Wii when Resident Evil 4: Wii, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, House of the Dead 2&3, Red Steel, Call of Duty 3, and Call of Duty World at War are all Million selling "Mature" games?