Whether you agree with his conclusions or not , he has presented a well thought out argument. That's the main reason why I consider his post , the post of the thread.

Without some pretty specfic information from the conduit devs or sega , we have no way of knowing how well or poorly the conduit did for a fact. Because of this , the most well reasoned argument gets the cookie.

A large budget HD game means about $20-30M, half of that is $10-15M. The Conduit sales mean about $20x300K=$6M at the moment, so you seem to be off by a factor 2.

Anyway the real issue is how they are treating the costs for the development of the engine, that I understand amounts to hundred man-years of work ie costed itself on the scale of $10M. If that has been split off, then of course the game sales will bring the game itself into profit area very quickly. Then it remains to be seen how much of a good investment the engine will be with The Grinder and all their future projects.

I never said that they had a loss, but they had an expectation of a loss based on Wii sales only. Any company has to make some kind of forecast before even having a green light for development

EDIT: To cmplete my post. I base my observations based on my experience in developent for software and small, independent games in my country. I based on cases I have seen and participated in. I don't have the data HVS uses or any other development companies because it's confidential. that's project management and business strategies after all

I don't think they are happy at all. They succeded in creating a lot of hype for the game, but failed to bring that hype into sales. I don't see how that can be pleasing.

The game didn't cost a whole lot to make, so I don't think the sales is a problem, but I'm 100% sure they had expected more.

"A large budget HD game means about $20-30M, half of that is $10-15M. The Conduit sales mean about $20x300K=$6M at the moment, so you seem to be off by a factor 2."

Actually, I meant the $10-$15 million. If that's gone up, then developers really have let costs get out of control.

"I don't think they are happy at all. They succeded in creating a lot of hype for the game, but failed to bring that hype into sales. I don't see how that can be pleasing."

They don't have as much of an illusion of internet hype=equaling sales as you do. Snakes on a Plane already disproved it.

I believe HVS should do what they said from the start and license out the Quantum engine.

Compairing apples to apples aka games that promised graphical advances for all systems

http://vgchartz.com/swlaunch.php?reg1=All&game1=The+Conduit+-+Wii&reg2=All&game2=Unreal+Tournament+III+-+PS3&reg3=All&game3=Unreal+Tournament+III+-+X360&weeks=100

For the first couple of months they tracked on par with each other, just now The Conduit is dipping below, but should get some more sales with the holidays, if it can hit between 400k to 500k it would be great for HVS and the argument about hardcore games on Wii, since UTIII had a lot of hype for many of the same reasons as The Conduit and if it can hit that range for HVS it's like "hey we sold as much as UTIII did on a single console"

If they market the engine too they can make some bank on it with some developers and it'll be a great success.

Is HVS even a publicly held company?

Sega is, and lying like that could still be seen as a way to manipulate Sega's stock.

If High Voltage is pleased with the sales, does nobody actually think that The Conduit might be under tracked here at VGC?

"[David Pellas] I can't provide exact numbers at this time, but we are pleased with the latest reports, especially given the tough economy. We recently received a report that showed that The Conduit is the top online game on the Wii, which is very exciting. We hope to maintain this ranking and look for strong sales to continue through the quarter."

Even through world economic troubles, would they really be happy with their latest reports if they look like they do here on VGC? Or would he? Is he lying? is his source lying? 2 years of development, 75 core developers plus everybody else on the studio has at some point been working on the game. There is lots of money just right there.

Still, 300 000 shipped might be a breakeven for The Conduit and some stores over the world should order more copies over time. So maybe the shipped data is more pleasing for the eyes then sales to us mortals.

And when it comes to the game engine, that work will probably be paid by more games then The Conduit.

- Worldwide recession
- New IP
- It's on the Wii

The above are reasons the game didn't get stellar sales (1m +). Still, them being pleased, tells us the game at least broke even or has returned on investment. The Grinder should do much better, not so sure about Gladiator though...