How can any 3rd party company afford exclusive titles in day and age?

With AAA games hitting the 40million plus budget level, I don't see how any 3rd party Studio can afford to make

console exclusives on there top titles.

I can understand that back in the days when games were relatively cheaper to make a studio can 

offset their  potential loss sales via lucrative royalty free deals with console manfacturers. 

But in todays ages it just doesn't make any sense with every exclusive you make you're 

losing a potential 10million plus sales. 

How can we expect any 3rd party dev to continue to keep console exclusives with this generation of gaming?

Like I said before the age of 3rd party exclusives has come to an end, 

only low budget titles and small upcoming dev studios will make exclusives. 

With this gen it's up the 1st party titles to win the war.  

According to what I've read, a publisher has to sell at least half a million copies of a game in order to break even on costs. For the 360 or Wii, that's not such a big number because they already have substantial user bases. It's fairly easy for a high-profile third-party game to sell half a million units. For the PS3, though, that is a huge number; you're basically expecting one out of every four PS3 owners to buy your game. That's the kind of attach ratio you'd expect from a killer app like Zelda or Halo or FF or Gears, not from a typical third-party game.magus-21

Well we don't really know how much the developer makes on each game. Out of the $60 consumers pay for the game how much of that does the developer get? Also if a developer spends 40 million on one game they have some major management issues. Epic claims that Gears only cost around 10 million.

Anyway lets say a developer spends 20 million on development and publishing and lets say they make $40 on each game after paying royalties to the console maker. If they sell 1 million copies that's 40 million subtract the 20 million they spent on the game and that leaves 20 million in profit. Is it unreasonable to think a AAA game wouldn't sell 1 million copies on the PS3 alone especially now that the PS3 is out in Europe? I don't think so.

We can't expect it , but there will be a couple here and there for strategic reasons. (More attention and more attention from the platform holders). MGS4 and FFXIII as a timed games would do very good things for Sony so they should look into seeing if they can do anything about those. If not , then no big deal. We can still play them and overall we will get more games from other developers now going multiplat.

Well we don't really know how much the developer makes on each game. Out of the $60 consumers pay for the game how much of that does the developer get? Also if a developer spends 40 million on one game they have some major management issues. Epic claims that Gears only cost around 10 million.

 

Anyway lets say a developer spends 20 million on development and publishing and lets say they make $40 on each game after paying royalties to the console maker. If they sell 1 million copies that's 40 million subtract the 20 million they spent on the game and that leaves 20 million in profit. Is it unreasonable to think a AAA game wouldn't sell 1 million copies on the PS3 alone especially now that the PS3 is out in Europe? I don't think so.

jdt532

[QUOTE="jdt532"]

Well we don't really know how much the developer makes on each game. Out of the $60 consumers pay for the game how much of that does the developer get? Also if a developer spends 40 million on one game they have some major management issues. Epic claims that Gears only cost around 10 million.

 

Anyway lets say a developer spends 20 million on development and publishing and lets say they make $40 on each game after paying royalties to the console maker. If they sell 1 million copies that's 40 million subtract the 20 million they spent on the game and that leaves 20 million in profit. Is it unreasonable to think a AAA game wouldn't sell 1 million copies on the PS3 alone especially now that the PS3 is out in Europe? I don't think so.

pimperjones

Yeah right this second it makes more sense to go muti platform cause there are only 1.5 to 2 million PS3s out there but after the PS3 is launched in Europe that will boost the amount of PS3s out there. Also by the time MGS4 and FFXIII come out there should be at least 7 or 8 million PS3s sold so why can't those games be exclusive? 

According to what I've read, a publisher has to sell at least half a million copies of a game in order to break even on costs. For the 360 or Wii, that's not such a big number because they already have substantial user bases. It's fairly easy for a high-profile third-party game to sell half a million units. For the PS3, though, that is a huge number; you're basically expecting one out of every four PS3 owners to buy your game. That's the kind of attach ratio you'd expect from a killer app like Zelda or Halo or FF or Gears, not from a typical third-party game.magus-21