In a follow-up to
yesterday's story about EA closing down Visceral Games, one of the leads on the studio's classic survival horror sci-fi game Dead Space 2 noted that development cost upwards of 60 million and having sold 4 million copies sold wasn't enough to turn a profit. Or, make it a financial success. Which adds weight to the idea that strong single-player big budget titles might be a gamble for a number of publishers.
Zach Wilson went on to state that the reason big publishers have created their own digital distribution services like Origin, and Uplay, is to maximize profit share. Noting that even though something might sell well it could still be a financial failure after all is said and done.
Also, and on a completely separate note EA's recent forays into single-player territory Mass Effect Andromeda and Mirror's Edge Part 2.0 got mixed reviews which makes us wonder how well they sold. And if that factored into the decision at all.
Posted 07:31pm 19/10/17
Posted 07:51pm 19/10/17
Posted 08:48pm 19/10/17
$50 US or equivalent in first world countries. Secondary markets usually see them pricing much more aggressively so that people don't need to bust a month's rent to buy an AAA game (and therefore never sell any in those countries.) Add to that the key resellers who buy from those cheaper markets then undercut the primary market price and you have an idea of some of the reasons big sales numbers don't always mean big profits.
Posted 10:07pm 19/10/17
Posted 10:15pm 19/10/17
They don't really sell much of that 4 million directly right? So what's the average margin Visceral would take for each copy sold after the distributors/sellers cut?
Likewise the 60 million budget to make it might not include marketing and other cost of sale or what have you.
Posted 10:39pm 19/10/17
Posted 08:51am 20/10/17
how naive lol
Posted 04:14pm 20/10/17
But seriously, EA didn't do enough with Dead Space 2 from a priority push standpoint, and a lot of the media was aware of it at the time. They tried to use E3 as their only really big marketing platform for it, but that just wasn't enough.
It's such a shame because I f*****g love the first two games, and the transmedia that came from the IP
Posted 01:38pm 21/10/17
Posted 06:07pm 26/10/17