I'm sure you do get it
now. I'm not particularly convinced when you said "$500,000,000 in net profit" then went out of your way to ignore all other costs when calculating that number that you got it before.
They didn't drop the price that early.
Yes, they did. January 17 of 2012 they released GT5 XL, at a reduced price and including all DLC to that point. That's in fact just a little over 13 months following the release of the game. By that point the game
had already been selling new at around that price for the regular edition of the game, just like GT6 is already easily available new at a $50 price point only a month in.
I did read the other posts, but many people are missing major points.
I take it that's why you repeated the same kind of bad information already shown to be misinformed before the first page of the thread was even done.
The number is a lot closer to a half billion than you may think.
That's interesting that you state this but then only throw up vague ideas for where this theoretical extra windfall could be coming from. Tell me: Even using your extra generous numbers that Sony gets on each copy, and even
continuing to ignore the massive amounts of money that Sony spends unrelated to the straight development costs (perhaps the highest of any game short of a GTA title, if I had to guess) and the long period of post-release development that was just as involved as the actual development; GT6 would still be short a good $200 million (7 million sales times "55 dollars" a pop) from your "estimate."
You want numbers? They sold "7 million in 13 months" at $60. That's $420 million in sales. Between 20 or 25% of that Sony didn't even see, because the retailer gets it as per the links from several pages ago. That's between 84 and 105 million, gone. We'll split the difference. 95. We'll also be
extremely nice and say that PD's marketing budget is only the 15% quoted in the source that quotes it; even though they sponsor several racing teams, several racing events, several racing drivers, Kaz's own personal racing efforts, several automotive events, their extremely elaborate young driver program (all of which you so helpfully pointed out, though seemingly only when it suited you), as well as the normal television and print and etc. ads that they run when a Gran Turismo game is actually releasing. So a generously-given 63 million. Let's even halve the typical distribution costs, since Sony can do at least some of that stuff themselves when other publishers can't. We get 14 million. Subtract all that from the original number and you have 248 million. Subtract 84 million from that (the "5 years" development, plus another year after that interview, plus another year of post-release support).
164 million. A pretty large chunk of change, to be sure, even if it probably would be notably smaller in this breakdown because of the marketing budget being so conservative.
Not at all reconcilable with "$500,000,000 in net profit."
I didn't, nor do I want to, go into detail of licensing agreements and revenue generators other than just pure unit sales, but just try and look at the whole picture. Do you think Nissan gets paid to have the most cars in the game or is it the other way around? Do you think that Bridgestone, Casio, Pirelli, or Yokohama get paid to have major visibility in the game?
I'm certain that some companies are represented in the game without PD dropping a cent to do it; just as I'm certain some companies have exorbitant fees.
At least when it comes to cars, I have little reason to believe that there are financial benefits for PD to include specific ones when Kaz
specifically said that they don't accept such financial considerations, even shirking off the question the second time when it was more specifically phrased in the manner you are suggesting.
Every GT game has had outside sponsors. I understand that real world tracks are obligated to have their sponsors represented, but not all in-game adverts are bound to this. It is a daunting task to get down to an exact number but I was ball-parking it.
You presented a wildly exaggerated number based on incorrect information (GT5 sales to before the official price drop), a number that you might as well have pulled out of thin air for all the proof you provided for it (the price Sony sells each copy of a game wholesale), and a word that you blatantly misused to tie it all together (net profit); and now you're backtracking with vague suggestions to come up with reasons it
could be right. Interesting definition of the term "ball-parking".
You think the Edge Camaro is going to make up that 200 million dollar best case scenario difference from your number? Or the handful of DLC packs they released? How about after you actually take into account
all of the costs? How about after you take into account the full year at
least following release that they were throwing the entire development team at the game for patches?
And 1/2 a billion sounds about right. Especially since gt5p helped subsidize the final product. So don't go getting a better-than-thou attitude and dismissing my "nonsense" when you can't even come to the discussion with any ideas or numbers of your own.
Pointing out that you're bolstering your opinion (not even disagreeing with it, mind) with inflated numbers based on obviously inaccurate math kind of
is an idea, sorry.
