I found a link for Japanese salaries- this work?
http://japanmanship.blogspot.com/2006/12/salary-overview-2006.html

The reason I didn't use these figures was:

"The salaries quoted are yearly salaries; as a full-time employee you will be part of the bonus scheme which skews the monthly income somewhat. It also doesn’t reflect tax, which is pretty decent in Japan, and benefit deductions, cost of living or holidays. "

And:

" All these figures can do for you is to give you an extremely rough indication of what kind of salary you may be looking at or have to negotiate for. A very rough, big picture painted with broad brushstrokes is what I’m getting at here, do not quote these figures as well-researched proof!"

Basically, the author doesn't have faith in his own numbers nor does he have the full picture.

well, I didn't say you should write a research report on the salaries of Japanese developers- besides, even with those figures, a 20 million + budget for MSG4 is very reasonable. And I'm thinking Konami got off cheap if that's all it cost.

Anybody know what the install base was for the PS2 when MGS2 came out? I'm expecting a similar level of demand for MGS4.

Do you guys know how much Halo 3 cost? Estimates point at $60 million all things considered (development, marketing and post-launch bonuses).

I know, I was just getting that information out there ...

I've only ever encountered a serious "Bonus Structure" once in my career. I was interviewing as a consultant at a small IT firm which was trying to encourage a greater level of productivity from their employees; their idea was to make a large portion (potentially the majority) of your salary bonus based. The structure was that you got a base salary (say $20,000 to $30,000) and then every use-case had an associated bonus for completion depending on the time it would take and its complexity (as an example a "40 hour use case" would have a $600 bonus).

I didn't get the job, so I don't know how well it worked, but when I saw the mention of a bonus structure in this post I thought that could greatly skew the numbers.

I was trying to figure out the cost for the employer in different regions and stumbled upon this interesting document: "Forbes Global Tax Misery Index - 2006" ( http://www.forbes.com/media/2006/05/Single_200_000.pdf )

 I am not agreeing or disagreeing.  I don't know the tax rate in Japan but in America it would be around 25% for a developer plus another 7% SS tax, plus paperwork, and other fees and costs.  Add in offices and equipment and I don't think 100,000 is insane.

I did the exact same calculation as Happy Squirrel, (200 x 2 x $100,000)/(PS3 install base) = ouch, when I saw the title.  Even expecting to see it the ignorance of business affairs and general estimation that people have still never ceases to amaze me. I'm sad to say that as right as Happy Squirrel is he is just wasting his time trying to explain this issue to certain people and that's a mistake I won't repeat.  Still, have to commend him for not being as jaded as I am and taking the time to try.

I will briefly add that it is taken as a general rule of thumb equation that an employee costs a company twice what his salary is. $50,000 for an annual salary is a fair assumption in the US, Japan, and certain W European countries for a college degree requiring professional job so $100,000 is a fair assumption for the per employee cost of a developer. Yes that is an estimation but estimations are something that can still be done reliably. Especially for us since we aren't Konami accountants so whether the true cost is $40,000,000.00 or $34,865,521.89 or $45,216,548.65 is irrelevant.

All I can say to those feebly trying to debate Squirrel on his point is go to college or educate yourself in some other way so you don't make such fools of yourselves in front of others.