Because what he is saying goes against the industry norm; at least half of the 1.5 million sale should be at full price, and even those at the discounted price should still net them money.

Most HD games are generally considered a moderate commercial success if they manage to break the 1 million mark on a console.  This game should have netted a total revenue of at least $30 million (very low estimate here) to the publisher of which a percentage generally find its way back to the developer.

As MS publish the game, I assume they funded the project. For a developer to therefore 'break even' at those figures is pathetically heartbreaking not to mention being unbelievable; just what type of contract did they sign with MS?

There are too many questions to answer and I won't call the dev a liar, but unless he can justify or clarify what he says, I'll treat his word with skeptism, a sort of 'their truth versus THE truth' scenario.

Seriously, that's like PC developers blaming rampant piracy. Blaming things that straight up steal 50%+ of your sales is pathetic. Just like those peopel who blame cancer for stealing the rest of their lives... whiners....

If people sell the game then they didn't like it. Is that their fault for not liking the "incredible art" that the developer made? Blaming the used games market is utterly pathetic because good games and appealing games are kept and not sold. Blaming the used game market is just lazy and shows that the developer doesn't believe in their product.

@ mibou

But you have to understand that many if not most of the sales were at a lower price. I got a brand new crackdown for $10. It got very cheap, very fast.

@ BOLD: I think you sorta got your answer why there. They aren't the first devs to not make a profit from a million sold. It's the natural of the business right now. Blaming the used game market doesn't solve the problem that they signed a carppy deal.

...If you look at the process of making games into movie experiences, I don't think that in the future a million will be enough anymore for your blockbuster games to break even.

I understand the complains about piracy. HOWEVER, why should people be forced to be stuck with a game they are done with?  Why don't developers make games that people want to hold on to so they don't trade it in?

Next up, once revenues aren't what they are supposed to be, developers will complain about people OWNING games, and they will want to end up having people rent their games directly from the publisher.  Then renting isn't profitable enough, so they want pay per minute.  That won't be profitable enough, so then developers will insist that people actually get a ton of ads in their games also.

Just curious how many people would pay for games costing $60 if they weren't allowed to trade in games to be able to pay the price for them.

That's why I'm low balling the total revenue to 30 mil, if the game was a full price $60 dollar game, the revenue would generally equates to $37 for the publisher ($3 more goes to MS which in this case equates to $40)

Since the first 500k were sold within the first 4 week at full price you already have 37*500,000 = $18,500,000 in revenue. I am giving a very low appraisal of the remaining million copies sold with a $11,5 million in revenue which equals to $11.5 per copy.

Even if a lot of the game were sold are bargain price, the balance should more than cover the $11.5 per copy to reach my lowball estimate, surely the game didn't get as cheap as $10 overnight, especially considering more than 700,00 copies were sold within the first 13 weeks (aka the first quarter).

*cough*Killzone 2*cough*

Killzone 2 has sold 1.7 million copies.

An Average dollar return of 20 USD per copy is probable.

If Killzone cost 25 million USD to make then it is heavily in profit by approx 9 million USD

Then the game probably cost them somewhere between 20-25 million I assume...