Thanks for the post Thierry!
Interesting breakdown on the financials. Dare I question the reporting of the WSJ??? :)
25M is big bucks. Their breakdown shows 17.5M wholesale. WHich means the developer gets 10%. Does this sound right?
At 17.5M, and wholesale unit price of 35 (easy number), we are talking sales of 500,000 units. Would the developer really only get 1.75M on a hit game? Didn't we pay better than a mil for the engine to Dominion Storm alone? More likely would be 17.5M sales on 4 decent titles, selling 150K units each at wholesale of $29. This would be fairly accurate for PC market. Would each developer get less than $500K? I think that the numbers make it look like publishing is more lucrative than it really is. Publishers take all the risk, front the money, pay for marketing, maintain tons of overhead, pay console royalties up front, and guarantee a certain royalty to the developer. The only way to get developer costs down, is to get economies from a major hit, or develop in house (more overhead/risk). And unfortunately, the developer costs and expectations are going up, up, up...
Was there mention of whether this was for a console game vs PC? Impact would be huge as SOny or whoever would want $5+ per for royalty. Whacks a quick 3M or so off the number. Licensed sports game? another $5 a pop, whacks another 3M off of our number....this isn't an easy business to be in... |
