Is selling a million still a good landmark?
emnmnme
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Registered User regular
Back in 1997, we were all fooling around with Goldeneye 007 and Saturn Bomberman and having our kicks. The industry was pulling in $7 billion a year. Now it's 2007 and the industry has expanded by leaps and bounds, pulling in $30 billion last year and expected to climb even further thanks to ads and subscription rates.
Now, selling a million copies of a game back in 1997 was a major deal and it usually took six months to a year for a hot title to reach that milestone. Now more people are buying games and Halo 3 has 1.5 million preorders and sells a million more the week after launch. Is it still a badge of honor to have a game labeled as a 'million-seller' or should the industry bump that figure up to keep the prestige alive? Three million seller?
EDIT: Here's a wikipedia list. Is there anything wikipedia can't do ... :P
Now, selling a million copies of a game back in 1997 was a major deal and it usually took six months to a year for a hot title to reach that milestone. Now more people are buying games and Halo 3 has 1.5 million preorders and sells a million more the week after launch. Is it still a badge of honor to have a game labeled as a 'million-seller' or should the industry bump that figure up to keep the prestige alive? Three million seller?
EDIT: Here's a wikipedia list. Is there anything wikipedia can't do ... :P
emnmnme on
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Selling a million copies is not the point. Recouping costs, which can vary wildly from game to game, is the point. If a game's gross exceeds its budget, it's an unqualified success. Even if it doesn't, depending on marketing compared with budget, it might still be a qualified success.
If someone really cares I'm sure there's million-seller stats by year, see if the number is going up.
Selling a million is probably more of a big deal now then ever, with the industry so atomised and the big sellers all being sequels.
I don't think the sales of Shenmue made back its costs.
I'm not trying to say you're wrong, I'm just pointing out that budgets seem to have expanded as much as the market itself, except that there seems to be more competition now, so it might be harder to expect to recoup all of that. There's got to be a recent article on game economics somewhere, I'm just too lazy to look.
Video games are pretty lucrative business if you can reliably release big sellers. The EA business model is a very profitable one.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Because Sega tapped A too late in depositing the Shenmue sales money and it got stolen
Million sellers are still good based on the amount of systems sold. 1/10th+ of 360 owners own Halo/Gears of War, and the same could be said for Raving Rabbids on Wii. And then you have the absurd like Zelda being sold to about 40% of the total Wii owners.
It did but it was close.
But man that game is such an anomaly. shit sales and a hilariously huge budget.
Well Shenmue only sold like 2 copies. But yeah, it needed to sell around 2 million units just to break even, which is really really rare in games.
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
NO! You're bringing back painful memories of Shenmue 2's QTE building of death.
Halo 3
Wii Sports (may not count)
Wii Play
Madden 08
Madden 07
Pokemon Diamond
Pokemon Pearl
Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero II (any system)
Oblivion (any system)
Gears of War
Mario Party 8
New Super Mario Bros.
Tom Clancy Rainbow Six: Vegas
Brain Training
Mario Kart DS
Nintendogs
God of War
God of War II
Fight Night Round 3
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Kingdom Hearts II
Final Fantasy XII
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Is that the full list though? Seems odd that so many of them are so incredibly recent in the grand scheme of things. I don't even see any games listed that came out before the PS2/GameCube/Xbox generation that just ended. That can't be right.
Edit: Okay, that is probably over the last decade or so. There were a ton of NES, SNES, and PS1 games that sold very well.
I know this is absolutely not true, but I totally can't tell you how I know.
猿も木から落ちる
It does seem like there would have to be a Pluto Nash equivalent to gaming released at some point. What about the most recent Bomberman?
1 million sold.
60 bucks a copy, more if you count worldwide.
minus marketing, minus production.
conservative guess at say 30 million budget?
didnt gears get produced for more like 25 million? iirc that was the highest budget for a while for a game cause it included development of ue3.
of course im making hyperbole here but there is no way selling 1 million could ever be considered financially a failure. no developer or publisher will ever greenlight a budget on the premise of selling a million minimum except in rare circumstances (Bungie, anything by Squeenix)
I wouldn't be surprised if it was WoW in terms of total revenue, but that might be cheating.
25 million is not even close to the highest game budget ever or even for a while. Hell, Shenmue was like sixty-five million and we've gone way past there since then.
Well, that's if you're saying most sold.
EDIT: Haha, oh wow. It's Super Mario if you count that it's bundled.
However, unbundled would be Pokemon Red, Blue and Green.
WoW is the highest in terms of revenue, easily. SMB3 sold the most copies, but production costs might have been high because of cartridges being expensive. Dunno about total profit; that's hard to figure because we don't have all the information.
Well, if we're talking ratio of budget to profit, any no-budget indie game hacked together in a bedroom then sold where price > $0, would make more cash (proportionally) than any commercial game, ever.
But in absolute value, who knows? probably an earlier title on the best-ever-sellers list.
Too Human has a $80-100 million budget. I highly doubt 1 million units will cover that.
NNID: Glenn565
I don't even think 2 million will cover that. After taxes and post-production costs... 3 million might be tolerable.
That's not remotely true.
O_o Someone is missing the concept of ratio here....
If I write a game in my bedroom and make even a cent off it, the proportion of profit to cost is infinite. Thus, I have made proportionally more money than any commercial game.
I'm still broke, but the magic of math makes me feel awesome.
But that's just nitpiciking, and it doesn't answer the question. No-one asked about ratios.
Someone is missing the concept of economics. You can't make a game for free. You have to put in time to make it. And time is money. All that fucking time you spent making your shitty little indie game is time you could have been spent making money.
So really now you have a negative ratio, and you haven't made shit. Because you never made enough money to win back the time you lost.
Is that cost with just the first game or spread out over all three of the games that are planed? Just wondering.
It almost seems like it would have to include all three because holy shit that is a stupidly large budget for a game.
And the worst part is they cancelled that fucking generic piece of shit that would have been lucky to sell even 100,000 copies.
Someone is... ah screw it, I won't go there.
Just let me have my failed stabs at mild humor. :P
Learn when to stop.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
This can't go on.
Look at Nintendo's first party efforts through the N64 years. SM 64, Star Fox 64, and both Zelda Games. All use the same engine.