HAHAHA, and i have seen no ps3 game worth buying, doesnt help much.... take that PS3

GO WII

I think we can seal the deal as far as MGS4 coming to 360, that game probably costed a lot more than $8.6 million to develop. They're going to want to sell as many copies as possible. If it releases simultaneously on both, it'll sell about a million copies in a few days.

ha! sony's goin' down!

"1) I don't believe they they spent more than 8 million dollars on MSG:Crossfire. That looks like it's still in alpha stage."

-- They are talking about next gen titles which will use the ps3 hardware to its fullest...

"2)Ridge Racer 7 is an update of RR6. 8M+ for this game? I don't buy into it."

-- I don't either, however it's expected, as they need to front the money to sony for their online system, for the bluray pressing, and not forgetting packaging and marketing of the game. I would say an easy $2 million goes into packaging, pressing and marketing for a standard game in the USA.

MGS4 probably has a massive budget (knowing harry Gregson WIlliams, you need a big budget...!) pressing a game on a new media format is going to be costly, packaging and marketing aswell... I expect $20 million and more for mgs4.
The cost just goes up and up when you start meddling with translators for the european markets, also pressings of multilingual manuals and new packaging, also liscencing under a NEW name (sometimes games have a different name in japan, usa AND europe).

For a next gen game, especially on a new format, its going to be costly. Making a movie is costly, you put in what you want to get out of it, basically,

Take Borat for example, a budget of $18,000,000.. very tiny for a movie these days.
What Sacha Baron Cohen did was blag the film by staying in character, causing a stir, creating word of mouth. That then spread his credibility, the character and it rose to such a high standard, now the film has ALREADY made well over $130,000,000... which is, as Borat would say "great success!".

But basically, you will have a set budget now for creating a next gen game. The wii is quite safe, its not breaking any boundaries, its keeping things cost effective. Its based on gamecube hardware, its got a standard size disc format, and apparently they are also creating new ways for developers to have an easier time to map controls to the wii-remote.

The Playstation 3 is setting a standard of its own, so its easy to say that games cost $8 million. When you think about the office space taken, the staff pay, the liscencing of the products (or cars for example), also liscencing of the music, marketing of the game (tv ads etc)... When you potentially can get $60 per unit sold, anyone would think $8 million is a sure fire deal!

The thing is though, thats just for a bog standard conversion. Frankly, the 360 will sell more conversions, its easier to develop for, disc formats are already in place... so as a developer, standard type games will not be so much fo a bargain (hence the vast amount of conversions/ports for the 360 when it first came out).

So conversions etc for the ps3 will be much more of a gamble, especially when the potential audience is much smaller.

"3)Do they really expect to sell 500K copies of MSG:Crossfire? Probably in Japan alone. It's made by Japanese and it's a Mobile Suit Gundam game right? !"

That game is absolutely terrible, once they start churning out the costs for european/worldwide release, that game will then become a commercial flop as the marketing, pressing and translation costs would be massive.

At the end of the day, its all down to word of mouth, and having a console which truely delivers its message.
If the ps3 can do this, and offer games to its target audience, it wont go far wrong. But basically don't expect many games to start being "innovative" because if the audience is smaller, then the developers will be taking a gamble every time...

thats what you get for making game just for PS3. it's there own fault.

This is good news for all Wii and 360 fanboys, and may scare the little guys into developing for those two consoles.

Woe to the Ps3.

trying to scare all the little developers eh?

1) I don't believe they they spent more than 8 million dollars on MSG:Crossfire. That looks like it's still in alpha stage.
2)Ridge Racer 7 is an update of RR6. 8M+ for this game? I don't buy into it.
3)Do they really expect to sell 500K copies of MSG:Crossfire? Probably in Japan alone. It's made by Japanese and it's a Mobile Suit Gundam game right? !

Cross platform anyone!? We might finally see the American console getting some considerable love from a considerable amount of Japanese developers.

Ultemately, they can always stick with their Wii. I bet they are dying for getting a piece of their own Wii.

How many 360 game sales to turn profit.
Using XNA? about 2 coppies

Heh. Not good.

ahahahaa, i've already said this but...i'll say it again: history repeats itself!

woohooo!!!! in N64 all over again!!! horray for horrible business decisions, stubborn presidents, and developers moving from one system to another

"and there games suck as hell (which is never)"

You forget to realize...that the PS3's best launch game is getting some very low reviews around the gaming community. Might wanna check your numbers, but the PS3 games are all ready lacking.

sony is not making money, which is what a gaming company is really for... the simple truth is they overpowered the ps3 and now it's hard to make a profit, especially considering the relatively small amount of consoles.

the ps3 is awesome, but it's TOO awesome; they should have made it less impressive so producing games for it would be cheaper, and there could have been more ps3s out.

man here we go about ps3 nt making money and blah blah blah.. until sony goes bankrupt (which will be never) and there games suck as hell (which is never) then these stupid people should start talking smack about ps3.. but since non of what i said is happening then nobody should be talking stupid like this...

MAD_VD
500,000 can sony make that many PS3's
==============================================================
LOL! THIS is the post of the year.

Well, I kinda figured it cost a ton to make those "pretty" graphics everyone wants. Still, the blow is bigger, because if a smaller title doesn't hit 500,000 units, that means we are more than likely never to hear of a sequel for it.(well, you probably wouldn't have now, but still, its even worse)

i have a 360, while im very happy with it, I long for games like final fantasy and good solid action or platforms, like rachet and clank and the weird game colosus for ps2. as an xbox owner I will never see the orginal japanese games that make the playstation what it is. unless of course sony keeps fuc#en up like this. 500,000 games for a profit on only $8mill spent? thats a huge amount of sales. Yes, there are alot of people out there that own or will own a particular console, but how many games have you passed up? Lets face gaming is an exspensive hobby, most people buy high profile titles like gears, final fantasy , halo, etc...... this is baddddd

Exclusives are gonna be itching to go to the next console, unless of course they are first-party.

If 8.6 Million bucks were to be spent on a SINGLE game, Developers must think twice before rushing into making any game...This is partially good, as it will force them to keep up with the good games only to enhance their sales

Don't know about you guys, but I like Tekken, Soul Caliber, Urban Reign and XenoSaga. I would buy a 360 *today* if they came out with a new XenoSaga for it.

dang. no wonder developers are skeptical on signing up exclusive titles...

ouch... sh**, no more of that sweet little gems...

Damn, that's some serious amount of money needed. So, how many 360 games do you need to sale to gain profit?

Namco-Bandai is one of the finest developers in the gaming industry. I always look forward to their games.

500,000 can sony make that many PS3's

I certainly HOPE Namco did NOT spend $8.6 million dollars on the Gundam wing game which doesn't even run well on the hardware...if they spent that much they need to seriously consider the competance of the company. Also out of all the consoles the PS3 is the LEAST mass market machine, how the hell do you have Mass market apeal for something marketed as a high tier computer system?Someone somewhere really didn't think this one through. One point tho-small devs can make downloadable games-that is the ONLY option developers have on PS3, but well that option is also available with the other machines too.

What are the numbers for Xbox 360 and Wii? Those numbers will probably decide which console will win this time.

Hey Namco, you want a mass market success? Put Tekken on the 360 and get it online. You'll make so much money everyone will forget about that dreadfull gundam game.

powerslave88
"that isnt too much to catch up to now!! they got this in the bag"

Many games never sell 500,000 copies, in fact, most don't ever go that high. So, in the bag? Hope that's sarcasm.

Yeah, that's a little crazy. Then again, that cost will be driven down fairly fast. But still....geesh. Remember Phantasy Star IV? That games cost almost $100 when it came out...in 1991. That's just craziness. You can practically buy a DS for $100.

500,000 copies to turn a profit??? No wonder games cost 60 bucks! It's a miracle they don't cost more!

More bad news for PS-3........

HA HA - nelson munts....they have to sell these gaems which is much harder that shippin. this is gonna be tought. makes pubishers not wanna make games.

that isnt too much to catch up to now!! they got this in the bag

Wow! That totally sucks!

Bad business when your staunch 3rd party developers think twice about developing for your system.

Half a mil to break even? Sony better think of a program to support small independent developers, and their online arcade had better rock, because developing for the 360 is looking more and more attractive by the day.

what!!! now you say it...

Namco Owen, make some good games for the PS3 first.

sony has been doing this for a while they aren't going to ruin this and will be alright! like all these articles you must give this whole thing time!

Alot of hate is growing for sony why i can tell you why but that will take all day BRUN SONY TO THE GROUND

Well I guess Namco is going to abondon ship, because until the end of next year I don't think any of the PS3 games will crack 500k by the end of next year.(Multi platform time!)

If PS3 crashed and burned I would die a happy, respectable gamer.

Thus this is why Sony shot themselves in the foot with the PS3, they forgot that only reason that PS1 and PS2 were the winner's of the last 2 Gen's was because of massive 3rd party support. They got cocky now thinking it was all the Sony name that put them on top, but it was not and as this Console war plays out they will realize that the hard way.

Looks like only the big names will appear on the PS3...

Agreed idealbasher

xxxbirdmanxxx
i have a question for people that don't like ps3 and are looking at this article. if you truly dont like it then why are you even looking at this stuff? same goes for people who dont like the Wii and Xbox360, there is no point to looking at there articles if it doesnt even involve something you own or are giong to own in the future....for me i play what is fun and f&*# the rest ........ I will tell you because i liked sony before they where full of F&*^ @#$% and i hope they stop making game systems when they don't care about having good new games anymore its more of a format war then a console war for sony

"pfft this claims Devlopers only get $17.20 per game sold ... that means SOny / retailers get $42.80 -- thats not true ... sony would get $10 - 12 , the retailer $25 and the devloper $23 - $25 .. which means its more like 380,000 copies of as game sold world wide ... note: this is for PS3 and 360 games ... "

Retailers make like 3-10$ per new game.

"henry4th
On the other hand, Killzone2 has a reported development budget of 21 million. That means it will need to sell more than 1.5 million copies to be profitable. And will it sell more than 1.5 million copies?

So what it comes down to is this: smaller games and/or companies don't need to spend 8.6 million dollars to make the games (hence, doesn't need to sell 500,000 copies to make profit). And big games are already spending that amount of money and selling that well, so what's the problem?"

The problem is henry4th that games that cost 8.6 million to make (the average) will NEED TO SELL 500,000 COPIES. Games like Killzone 2 (not even above average but excellent) will NEED TO SPEND 21 MILLION TO SELL A MILLION COPIES.

See the problem? Even crappy games will need to spend big bucks. And because they are crappy they easily wont sell 500k. Just look at the PS3 with its installer base. Those games alone rarely pass the 500k mark even with 10 of millions of PS3 allready in peoples homes. There aren't even 500k PS3 out yet. According to the numbers you need to sell about as many PS2 as there currently are to even try to break 500k.

some people just complain at start, everything is hard to make at first, later on, game will require less money. retailer get about 20, sony only get about 10, and devoloper get 20, that's things about ps2 game. i dont know about ps3 game, but this article is said too much.

pfft this claims Devlopers only get $17.20 per game sold ... that means SOny / retailers get $42.80 -- thats not true ... sony would get $10 - 12 , the retailer $25 and the devloper $23 - $25 .. which means its more like 380,000 copies of as game sold world wide ... note: this is for PS3 and 360 games ...