I don't believe you can pin a rule of thumb on marketing costs - Sven of Capcomunity said it was 10-20% I think (Someone correct me if I have forgotten) but in all honestly a games marketing budget will reflect the game. Further a publisher will not use developement costs as an indication of marketing budget- they'll use expected revenue generated. If your 50% figure was correct then DS games like the Imagine series wouldn't have sold at all - they're a fine example of the marketing being far above developement costs.

 It's a good rule of thumb for high-budget HD games, but there are many other gaming models which it doesn't apply to. Even the Wii market is seeing marketing costs excell ahead of developement costs now.

Ok, cool.

I'll admit that I didn't account for the fact that super games like FF13 will squeeze a few extra dollars from each copy.

Still, $48 sounds very much to me, at least on average lifetime since there's usually a platinum edition or something like that, which will be counted and cited as a games lifetime sales on this site.

Let's assume MGS4 will have 4.8 million copies sold 'lifetime' (say a year from now) - I dont like that people will assume it's $48 if that sales number includes a few hundred thousand bundled copies, and a few hundred thousand platinum version sales (in addition to the possible cheaper than $48 late shipments).

Oblivion, my favorite game: it's at 4.6 million copies PS360 right now on VGC databse (ioi hasnt updated it's Euro numbers), but I know lots of them are the cheaper GOTY version etc (last week the game sold 18,000 copies in the USA alone, according to VGC). Now, I don't want to fool myself and lie to myself and have the false impression that Oblivion made $35 x 4.6 million = $161 million in revenue (as the majority on this site would calculate it). More realistic IMO is 4.6 million x $25 = $115 million, and the difference is very significant.

Might take the crown as "most expensive game ever" away from GTA 4.

I agree. Generally I object to rules of thumb, but they're popular among the people. Two I hate are "a HD game needs to sell 260,000 copies to break even" and "A HD game costs $10 million to develop", although the more correct individuals add the word 'average' in there.

So in the same way it's misleading to cite a specific % number of marketing budget which varies almost as much as the dev budget of HD games.

(and yes of course I agree with "a publisher will not use developement costs as an indication of marketing budget", because naturally the sales potential of the final product not always reflects the total costs of creating it, hence why Halo 3 had insane marketing budget)

But who is Sven of Capcomunity and which kind of games did he mean? All Capcom games?

And FF XIII budget discussion became less than a memory in people mind.

 I'd say specifically for FFXIII (And any, as you put it. 'super title') that $35 is a fair average, if not too low. This is more cause of limited editions though - which cost peanuts to make 'extra' but pretty much bring in an extra $10 of so per copy sold to the publisher - You can bet FFXIII will have one and it'll sell very well, as is the nature of the FF fanbase. Same applies with MGS to me - sure they lose revenue from the sales of 'platinum' but they made extra off of the tin edition or whatever it was.

It should also be noted in your $25 vs $35 dollar example that publishers to generate a greater revenue (In Dollar terms) off of Japanese and European sales then American sales, so I'd say $35 is a fairer figure for a game which sold strong worldwide.

 It's nice to find someone who actually has a clue about this sort of thing though, seems we're on the same level with most things but obvious there are minor niggles worth debating :P.

 Sven works for Capcom (I forgot his title) but he obviously has a good knowledge of sales figures and this sort of thing. his particual rant was aimed at someone talking about Zack and Wiki's lack of profit (after he said the game made a loss) but he threw out the 12%-20% marketing budget based on projected revenue. We're going back to early Janurary here so my memory is sketchy.

 Trying to put an average on marketing budgets to me is pointless, I'm positive EA spend more on marketing their sports games then making them for instance. It really should be taken as a case by case example.

you are making me drool, 100$ million? it's going be hot xD

I think they will break even day one. After that, profit!

Doesn't really matter, all FF XIII has to do is sell 5-6 million copies, and its going to do that alone on the PS3