Yakuzaice said: noname2200 said: Torillian said: Do you honestly think Madworld cost less than half the price of Valkyria Chronicles, even with the fact that Madworld actually got advertising? 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. Valkyria Chronicles did pretty much the same or better than the Sakura Wars games after those on the Saturn.  I'm not sure why you bring up advertising.  VC might have had some in Japan, but Madworld (in the US) had television advertisements tied with the HotD ones as well as its own campaign.  In the states VC had none outside of maybe some internet ads. Anyways, nobody knows the budgets or what price sega shipped each unit at, so this topic is rather pointless.  People will just make up numbers to support their position.

I'm aware of the sales numbers, and I bring up advertising because it still costs money to advertise a game in Japan (as VC was), and from what I've heard it was a moderately extensive campaign (two of them). If you wish to include the four-second blurb on Madworld that the Overkill commercials had go right ahead; I'm not trying to downplay the latter's budget here. But that's not an aspect that was exactly one-sided either.

nobody except trolls who cant make math think otherwise.
For the record,and while we cant make assumptions since we dont know the development costs of those games, but we can asume they werent high due to the short time they took and average low sized staffs.
when metroid prime corruption, sold 1 million, it reported 30 million profits.Is almost 100 percent true that MP corruption is a much higher budget title than Madworld or HOTD.
Within the year,both titles would have net healthy profits for Sega and its devs.

Now that both games have the price drops...the sales will go high. Despite not earning that much...the sales will improve so profit will remain the same. Slow and Steady wins the race.

I don't know about its development costs, but weren't once some sort-of-official statements for MadWorld, talking of a $4M marketing effort? Even assuming quite low development costs ($4-5M) that would mean $8-9M+ to cover.

At $25 per sold copy going to the publisher, that's 320-360k sales needed at full price, more like 400-500k over the life of the game since it was dropped to $30 at retail pretty early (I think it had less than 150k sales, hard to say with the adjustments).
Thus why should we think it's turning a profit yet, at 220K copies sold in total?

Correct me if I'm wrong about the marketing cost numbers, though.

WereKitten said: I don't know about its development costs, but weren't once some sort-of-official statements for MadWorld, talking of a $4M marketing effort? Even assuming quite low development costs ($4-5M) that would mean $8-9M+ to cover. At $25 per sold copy going to the publisher, that's 320-360k sales needed at full price, more like 400-500k over the life of the game since it was dropped to $30 at retail pretty early (I think it had less than 150k sales, hard to say with the adjustments). Thus why should we think it's turning a profit yet, at 220K copies sold in total? Correct me if I'm wrong about the marketing cost numbers, though.

I've heard from Capcom that usual advertising for a game is close to %10 of its overall budget. I also heard that they spent $2m advertising Zack and Wiki in Japan, but to no avail. They spent a little above the norm to help that game out. I doubt that MW's advertising would be half the overall cost, assuming it cost $8m to make,which is a little too high. $1m in each territory (NA/EU) sounds about right. However, that is Sega money, not Platinum. It cost $3m to advertise during the 2009 Super Bowl, because there were 90m viewers available. So $1m for every 30m people available sounds like a normal advertising budget on TV. However, networks obviously don't get that high a number every day, so the cost could be divided by a substantial amount. I'm just throwing it out there, but it could be like $25,000 per network, if that.

One factor hasn't been added into the mix - these games came out in the spring. I suggest waiting until after the holiday season to determine how well or poorly a game did. Many people don't have the luxury of buying games through the year, and it becomes something done during the winter holiday season. I for one have little cash throughout the year, but put aside money for the holidays, when I have extra money or snag a buy 2, get 1 free deal, or get gift cards to Best Buy. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, especially with the way the economy is. All games should be judged until after the holiday season to see how they ended up doing.

bardicverse said: One factor hasn't been added into the mix - these games came out in the spring. I suggest waiting until after the holiday season to determine how well or poorly a game did. Many people don't have the luxury of buying games through the year, and it becomes something done during the winter holiday season. I for one have little cash throughout the year, but put aside money for the holidays, when I have extra money or snag a buy 2, get 1 free deal, or get gift cards to Best Buy. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, especially with the way the economy is. All games should be judged until after the holiday season to see how they ended up doing.

Just look at de Blob

@ PSrock and others, even though we don't know the exact dev. costs, Sega did say they were satisfied with sales, so I think it's a rational assumption to make about it made some profit. Deny all you want, it's true ;). As a wise person once said, ignorance is bliss.

PS. I don't think it's very rational to go by the opposing fanboys to find out if a game of the opposing console is a success ;).

I just don't get how a game budget can get as high as they do this gen...

psrock said: Soriku said: psrock said: Soriku said: I'm talking about a bomb by profit, not what your standards are. when you can provide me evidence of this unknown profit then I can assure you this thread is purely based on hope. If you don't know how much it costed, why are you arguing? You're arguing the same thing as us. It could have made a profit, it could not. So why are you so sure it bombed? 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.

The truth. We still remember how Mad World was going to be THE Wii core game whose massive sales were going to silence the critics. It never happened, and now we are left with fanboys desperately trying to claim that it scraped a profit.