I'd be surprised if it had made a profit right now. The budget price hurts the profit margin. It does not affect the cost of materials either. The budget for the game should also be ludicrous, and raising in tandem with the profit brought in by GT5Prologue. The last part is what convinces me. Why not reinvest a large portion of the profits into the main game that has so much interest?

Guys JUST IMAGINE the profit GT5 will be bringing, it will almost all be pure profit, ALMOST!

GT5 launch quarter could be profitable for sony, easily!

That's basically a hunch, not an estimate.

This article is too light on the details. You pretty much couldn't make a less accurate estimate. It doesn't even consider that the price has decreased since launch.

People need to decide if GT5P is a full game or a demo. It can't be a full game and a demo at the same time.

well lets see where they have spent money and where they heave earnt money:

Spent=

1) Publishing GT5p
2) Marketing GT5p
3) Publishing GT5p
4) Developing GT5
5) Marketing GT5
6) Publishing GT5

Generated Revenue from=

1) Selling GT5p (online + on disc)
2) Creating and selling Nissan Skyline gtr interface
3) Creating and selling technology for new Toyota Supra GPS tracking


So if it cost $60million to make GT5 and lets just add another $20million for advertising and publishing bringing the total to $80million we have to money they have made from seeling and creating tech to car companies above and money generated through GT5p.

GT5p sold over 3.5million copies on disc and further more numbers on PSN (including psn sales, there are alledgedly over 4million copies sold).

So if we take 3.5million and multiply it by $39.99 we get $139,965,000.

So we take the $139,965,000 and add what Sony got for creating and selling some tech to Nissan and Toyota.

Even if we take out $40,000,000, Sony still has made a profit. At worst they are probably breaking even, but i think that is unlikely.

Its a semi-game!

GT5P is not a full game, as it's name says, it's a prologue. 

It's not a demo though, since it has enough content to rival some full games itself.

The demo tidbit was thrown around in 2008 because of the high price. I remember people posting "I'm not paying up for a 40$ demo". Those same people now call GT5P a full game, when comparisons are made to other racing simulators. It's a bit ironic really.

OT - It's good that Sony and PD are reaping the rewards from GT5P, this will ensure the continuity of quality and excellence of work that PD is known from ;) 

A hunch, true. And it's true that it doesn't consider the decrease in price, but at the sametime we know that on PSN downloads of GT5: Prologue are almost pure profit and would rake in masses of cash per download. I'm not convinced it's covered the entirety of the cost of GT5 development, but it's certainly helped Sony and PD a lot.

LOL, I don't know if semi-game is the right term, but it definitely doesn't sit properly in either category.

It can't be a full game, because the full game is yet to be released.

It can't be a demo, because it isn't free and a lot of people pay good money for it.

It's some kind of beta or preview that people pay money to enjoy. It's a really impressive feat on Polyphony/Sony's part and I can't think of any other game that manages this to earn revenue off a beta release.

@ CGI-Quality

I'm not sure, but I'm also certainly not going to take the word of some blogger and his fuzzy math. If Sony or Polyphony announce that sales of GT5:P have entirely funded the development of GT:5, I'll buy them. In Mythbusters terms, it's plausible, but far from confirmed.

I don't see how this is any different than any predecessor title essentially paying for it's sequel. Is it a special case just because of the Prologue name? I see this the same as Assassin's Creed paying for Assassin's Creed II, Resistance: Fall of Man paying for Resistance 2. Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is essentially the title that ate the costs for developing the engine and a lot of major costs, and it's pseudo sequel Gran Turismo 5 is the one that reaps the benefits. Really the money from any of these games could be redistributed anywhere the publisher wants, so this is a pretty common occurrence. Don't let the oddity of it being a "Prologue" confuse the very simple situation at hand.