Remember when they make games for the 360 or the PS3, they have to hire 500 PR spokesmen who can deflate and debunk rumors from fanboys claiming that this or that dev said that this or that console was sooooo much better to work on...

i can't understand why any developer would want to make games on ps3. its an insanely expensive system to make games for that is not popular. where's the return on that. sounds like developers only lose money on it, which begs the question why not just let it die?

$25-$30 back to the developer seems really, really high.  Don't forget that Sony takes a huge chunk out of that $60 -- more than Nintendo or Microsoft -- in royalty costs.   North of $15, I'd imagine.  The retailer takes between $5 and $10 per full price game.  The publisher takes its cut as well, since it provides the distribution, packaging, *marketing*, etc.

The previously stated number was that the average development would have to reach at least 500k sales to break even on the PS3.  The PS3 does have abnormally high costs, and Sony takes a big royalty, so these numbers don't surprise me.  But it's almost hopeless for developers making exclusives on the PS3.

TheBigFatJ - actually, Sony charges $10 per software title, the same as Nintendo.

With those PS3/XBOX dev costs, it must be really hard for most games to even see profitability. They'd need at least a mil to be in the black.

Wow, $40 million so far? So if they don't spend any more money (unlikely), how many copies of Killzone 2 must be sold for it to make a profit? 2 million?

In other words, it makes no economic sense for a company to make a typical PS3-only game, unless Sony is paying them lots of money to do so.

 Ah... NO. You don't seriously think that the developer gets 100% of the proceeds from the game's sale, do you?

Store Profit

Distributor Profit

Console royalties

Marketing

All have to be taken out first.

While the general retail rule of thumb (each link is the supply chain doubling the cost) doesn't work for Video games, even assuming that stores are only making $10.00 per $60.00 game changes things.  Then add on Sony's royalty, and subtract out marketing costs...  Seems like a developer would be LUCKY to net $35 a game.

  Wrong. The budget for Shenmue 1, 2 and 3 came to $70 million. I think we can say it ended up at about $30 million for 1 and 2, and then $10 million for shenmue 3 before it got canned.

  Anywho, my take on things is about $1 million - $8 million on the wii, $15 million - $20 million on the 360 and $20 million + on the PS3.

  On the Wii though it can be as high or low as they want really, something like Carnival games would be luck to cost $1 million but games like RE:UC and Final fantasy CC TCB could probably exceed $8 million.

 I'm not sure what Nintendo's costs are though. You'd think with the games size and depth they'd be extremely expensive to make, but then I always think how Nintendo made the hardware, have been developing on the archetecture for 7 years+ and have so much experience they must be able to keep the costs down more then anyone. 

   To help people, two Namco PS3 launch games (Ridge Racer 7 and something else) needed 500k to break even. That was an offiicial statement, google it if you want.

Note:

Anyone in this thread claiming specific numbers for retailler cuts or console maker cuts (outside of specific, cited examples) is BSing you. They don't know exactly what Best Buy or Nintendo are making per game sold. They are NOT making a simple, across-the-board rate.

It seems that the cuts are generally around 20% for the console maker, and a little less for the retailler. However, for a huge game that the publisher wants to sell a lot of, they may give the retailler a bigger cut so they'll stock more. On the other hand, the console maker may give the publisher a better deal if they think the game can move hardware.