That seems quite unwise, seeing as how it ignores a very vital part of the picture. If raw sales were all that mattered, EA would still be profitable and Phoenix Games would have gone belly-up long ago, so we know that we can't go by that metric. I'll freely grant that we rarely get full figures for the development+marketing cost of any given game, but to take that fact and thus ignore that entire factor is doing yourself a big disservice.

This is what I don't get. We were told these things by gaming websites like IGN, but I don't buy it. Because what this means is we'll have to eliminate games like CoD 3/W@W, Red Steel, RE4 Wii Edition, and HOTD 2/3.

Just one of these things that boggles my mind, disregard the games that disprove something in favor of two games that prove nothing.

EDIT: HappySquirrel beat me to it.

EA had major bombs as well, they had a terrible holiday period. thus contributing to their losses. But most of you underestimate the cost to make games for the Wii as well. It's smaller, but as the game gets bigger so does the cost.

At the same time though, Clover has a long history of either underestimating development costs and/or overestimating sales potential. I'm fairly confident that they thought Madworld would do better, even if it was foolish of them to think so.

 Yes, but this only reinforces my point, as their major bombs are titles like Dead Space and Mirror's Edge...i.e. games that had tremendous raw sales, but from what they've told us not enough so to make those games profitable. You're correct about the second part, I think, hence my comments about Madworld needing to do more (from what we've heard Overkill's doing well enough).

Currently, both games are at 35 bux at amazon.com so there is a price drop.

But then that only shows that the sales will show massive legs.

Instead of earning $30 for 1 copy, they will earn $30 for 2 copies. So, Sega will end up getting profit for both games approximately by the end of the summer for sure even if the development costs were very high.

I would say combined Lifetime sales of 750k is a great number to consider them not a fail.

According to my math, they both needed to sell 750,000 copies in order to bring true profit to their publisher, and I don't think either one has reached 750,000 yet.

(games and movies have to earn twice what they cost to make in order to earn satisfactory profit, so if both games cost $30.00 in the store and they took ten million to make. They would have to earn back 20 million dollars (24 million counting advertising), so if they sold a million that would be 3 times what they cost to make and more than enough to justify sequels. If they sold 500,000 copies, they would only be earning 1.5 what they cost to make which isn't enough. So, they both needed to sell 750,000 to earn back twice what they cost to make.)

So, I guess we can conclude by your math that Metal Gear Solid 4 and Killzone 2 didn't bring a true profit to their publisher ...

I'd like to add that Sony or MS would be lucky to get $30 off of their first party fully priced titles.

Let alone a third party title.

Listen to Captain Picard.

      Well, they're working on it.  MGS 4 will be selling more copies as a greatest hits game when the PS3's audience goes over 5 million in Japan probably by the end of March 2010 following the releases of GT5 and FFXIII as PS3 exclusives in Japan later this year.

      And, Killzone 2 might not appeal so much to Japanese gamers for it to get a real boost in sales as the PS3's Japanese sales numbers continue to grow.  However the strengthened support from Japanese devleopers for the PS3 which will be coming the PS3's way in the wake of the sales growth I mentioned previously that will cause definite distinction between the PS3 and 360 libraries later in this gen may lead more people to pick up Killzone 2 later in the gen.

    Of course, I don't know how much it cost to make either MGS4 or KZ2.  If it cost 60 million to make both MGS4 and KZ2.  Then priced at $60.00 at launch, if they sold 1 million copies each they would be breaking even at one million sales, but to get the satisfactory profit I wrote about before, then MGS 4 would have to sell 2 million copies and KZ2 would have to sell 2 million copies.  MGS 4 has already sold 4 million copies, so it is probably making a profit and it looks to me to be fairly likely that KZ2 will sell more than 2 million copies.

     Basically any game or blockbuster movie needs to make back twice what it cost to make to make a profit for its creator and to have money for them to make a sequel.