CAPTAIN RAINCOAT
Member
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Sony will re-release it on PC...there will be a ps5 pro version (most likely a paid pro patch and directors cut) and there will also be a ps6 remastered version so it will eventually make its money back
Thread: Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition News Thread (Update: Cleared by the European Commission)
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Sony will re-release it on PC...there will be a ps5 pro version (most likely a paid pro patch and directors cut) and there will also be a ps6 remastered version so it will eventually make its money back
I'm not sure where this 19million comes from, but a quick search has official figures from February at 11million units sold, so if we go with just digital, which would be around 90% of sales these days, would be at least $700,000,000, of which they have barely any overheads as it's their own title, so pure revenue for Playstation.
Assuming the $80m budget is correct, even if they spent twice as much on advertising as they did developing the game, digital alone would have made them almost $500m.
And that's not counting physical copies or the extra 5 months of sales since then.
I don't see how it not having made a profit is even a question, basically
Bernd Lauert
LTTP
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80 million dollars, 19 million copies (not dollars). Big difference.
The question posed was not "if" but "how much" with the implicit assertion that the profit-level was significant.
And that's without knowing what the unit price is, the margins, or the cost to bring the product to market - as summarised by my shortlist.
Units sold is not the same thing as revenue.
Revenue is not the same thing as profit.
Without knowing all costs-to-market, it is impossible to determine profit.
Endorsing assertions which are based on either an ignorance of the factors involved, or a deliberate point of overlooking those same factors is a merely a demonstration of favouring fiction above fact.
This is fine, so long as those choosing the path of fiction understand that their arguments are regarded as such.
Very happy to continue these arguments once the essential details are provided by those making them.
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Phil_t98
Member
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God Of War 2018 Reaches 23 Milion Sales Worldwide
Sony expects God of War: Ragnarok to have a similar performance after it launches.
www.gamespot.com
23 million sales is more accurate now. seen that this morning.
do you honestly think a game that's sold 23 million copies isn't highly profitable? just your opinion
Note how the person asking "how much" has now changed their argument to "if" and hoping nobody will notice the moving of goalposts.
Also note how the same person persistently refuses to give direct answers to the questions borne of their own arguments, always deflecting and posing skewed questions of those challenging them.
Because I've not declared any position, there is no need for me to be questioned as if I have, nor coerce me into substantiating one position or another.
As I stated very very clearly: All these ploys are tiresomely obvious and all are anticipated.
None of them further the argument raised. All of them show a reliance on bad-faith engagement.
As I just clearly stated:
Units sold is not the same thing as revenue.
Revenue is not the same thing as profit.
Without knowing all costs-to-market, it is impossible to determine profit.
Endorsing assertions which are based on either an ignorance of the factors involved, or a deliberate point of overlooking those same factors is a merely a demonstration of favouring fiction above fact.
This is fine, so long as those choosing the path of fiction understand that their arguments are regarded as such.
Very happy to continue these arguments once the essential details are provided by those making them.
Also note how the same person persistently refuses to give direct answers to the questions borne of their own arguments, always deflecting and posing skewed questions of those challenging them.
Because I've not declared any position, there is no need for me to be questioned as if I have, nor coerce me into substantiating one position or another.
As I stated very very clearly: All these ploys are tiresomely obvious and all are anticipated.
None of them further the argument raised. All of them show a reliance on bad-faith engagement.
God Of War 2018 Reaches 23 Milion Sales Worldwide
Sony expects God of War: Ragnarok to have a similar performance after it launches.
23 million sales is more accurate now. seen that this morning.
do you honestly think a game that's sold 23 million copies isn't highly profitable? just your opinion
As I just clearly stated:
Units sold is not the same thing as revenue.
Revenue is not the same thing as profit.
Without knowing all costs-to-market, it is impossible to determine profit.
Endorsing assertions which are based on either an ignorance of the factors involved, or a deliberate point of overlooking those same factors is a merely a demonstration of favouring fiction above fact.
This is fine, so long as those choosing the path of fiction understand that their arguments are regarded as such.
Very happy to continue these arguments once the essential details are provided by those making them.
God Of War 2018 Reaches 23 Milion Sales Worldwide
Sony expects God of War: Ragnarok to have a similar performance after it launches.
23 million sales is more accurate now. seen that this morning.
do you honestly think a game that's sold 23 million copies isn't highly profitable? just your opinion
OK, let's crunch some numbers and be hyper conservative about it!
Let's round down to 20 million sales, and say only 50% of those were digital. Let's also say Sony only makes 50% of the sales revenue after expenses digitally, and 10% physically. Those numbers are unrealisyically super low, but that way we can also just say 70 bucks per sale and still be right enough for this ultra minimum estimate even with store cuts, overheads, discounts and sales.
That would mean that would put the minimum revenue after expenses at 420,000,000 dollars.
Now I found a few articles linking back to a Shuhei Yoshida interview, saying the budget for the game was $200m dollars, so even if we say that's all dev costs and double it, like it was a hollywood blockbuster, to account for marketing, even with my insanely low estimates, deliberately ignoring an estimated 3 million more sales, not counting more expensive versions of the game and massively low-balling both the physical/digital split and revenue from each sale, it would still have made $20m profit.
The actual figure will be massively more than that though.
Even deliberately trying to make this game come out as unprofitable, without being totally unrealistic, it would have made money.
What was the global marketing spend?
You don't have to be super-accurate. To the closest million dollars will do.
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That is so mindboggeling stupid that I just died.
There seems to be almost zero info on the actual figures for AAA game marketting spend online, so I estimated that it would be double production costs, as it is for movies, but actually now I look deeper, the budget we get reported on for games seems to include marketing, and actual dev costs are the smallest part of the overheads, which would actually be a big factor in why costs have gone up so much.
So yeah, if that $200m budget includes advertising spend, and Playstation follows the way Activision, EA, Ubisoft etc calculate budgets, then even with my insanely low-balled profit estimate they nearly doubled their costs.
Realistically though, it would have made a fuckton of money.
And I mean obviously it has. It sold ridiculously well, far better than most AAA games and with vastly lower overheads thanks to being a first party title and thus not needing to split sales revenue. If Ragnorok couldn't make a profit, then every 3rd party publishers would have gone bust years ago.
I know! But that's the point I'm trying to make, even if you go laughably low on estimated revenue figures, it's still hard to make this game a failure.
Sales are not revenue.
Revenue is not profit.
There are stone-cold essential and irrefutable pieces of this argument that are treated like they are either non-existent, unimportant, or as malleable as bubble-gum.
Any gauge of profitability is simply impossible to make without having these factors to hand. Such is the fallacy of this entire argument.
I appreciate your contributions a great deal @Stilton Disco, but we are at "Who would win in a fight - Superman or Batman?" levels of substantive integrity here.
And that's not counting the demonstrably disingenuous antics of the person that brought up - and persists with - the argument in the first place. (And that's not even counting their two other swiss-cheese-like arguments that they're hoping I've forgotten about).
For anyone genuinely interested in the gamut of factors involved in this argument then I would very much recommend subscribing to to GamesBrief, GamesIndustry.Biz and also Ask a Game Developer sites.
EDIT:
I'll add that it's rather interesting how a first-party, original IP, with no licencing deals, that doesn't gouge with DLC or microtransactions, was borne of internal studios rather than being an inherited/purchased IP, does not drive server/cloud adoptions - is of such a pivotal focus to some in a thread such as this.
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But if it were so difficult for a first party developer to make a profit, where they have the lowest overheads, make the most revenue from sales, and quite frankly have most restrained budgets, since $200m in today's industry is incredibly restrained for a game like Ragnarok, then third parties would have already completely disappeared.
If Ragnarok didn't make money, then Jedi survivor would have lost hundreds of millions. I mean how many millions of copies would Ragnarok have needed to sell for you to think it was worth Playstation making it? 30 million? 40? More? Why would anyone make games if that were the case?
This is still "Batman or Superman?" levels of substance.
Reminder: I have not declared a position on profit loss. But I know what needs to be known in order to make such a determination.
Jedi Survivor will have its own unique factors, such as licence cost of Star Wars IP and the fact it is a multi-platform release. Unless you are genuinely prepared to go into a full, spreadsheet-heavy deep-dive of these things then this amounts to "Yeah, but what about Spiderman?".
Reminder: I have not declared a position on profit loss. But I know what needs to be known in order to make such a determination.
Jedi Survivor will have its own unique factors, such as licence cost of Star Wars IP and the fact it is a multi-platform release. Unless you are genuinely prepared to go into a full, spreadsheet-heavy deep-dive of these things then this amounts to "Yeah, but what about Spiderman?".
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I think you're getting way too focused on the idea of small details and context specific factors that really wouldn't have that big of an impact to overall broad trends and common factors across the industry.
I mean I can vouch for this kind of broad number crunching working fine for major infrastructure projects, up to and including a nuclear power plant I'm currently involved in the planning for, and from previous jobs involving estimating costs and profits for several hundred schools, or the running of multiple biochemical labs, as well as more pertinently matching up with what we know of how gaming sales, revenue and profits have worked for at least the last 20 years I've been following this subject, up until literal just this thread, so I'm not really sure what you're fixating on and saying we absolutely need to be able to make any kind of educated guess is actually as important as you think it is.
Knowledge of costs is not a 'small detail' when determining profitability.
I would strongly advise against an appeal-to-authority argument here.
If Sony's first party weren't profitable on some level, they wouldn't exist. I dare say Ragnarök cost a lot, but it also sold pretty well for them and will likely continue to sell well for them.
This whole 'we can't know' line of reasoning is for the birds.
This whole 'we can't know' line of reasoning is for the birds.
This is a significantly different argument than saying "GAME X GENERATED Y LEVELS OF PROFIT".
To demonstrate this, I've coloured the elements of the statement that deviate from the original argument that was put forward and has outstanding questions borne of it.
That's cool. I'm simply asking for any of the "we must know" people to provide me with verifiable detail.
So far, everyone who engages seems to be not only unwilling or unable to do this, but disengenuous that not providing or even acknowledging critical details on which an argument relies on should, in no way, impact the merit of the conclusion put forward by the swiss-cheese argument.
This is, supposedly, what good debate is about: Being able to make a robust argument and substantiate it when its challenged.
Instead debate must be quashed because when the argument raises questions and people refuse to engage with those questions in good faith, we lay down excuses that suppress the practice of critical thinking.
No. What is being endorsed is the opposite of debate. Think with the group. Don't ask questions.
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This question, if it is one, has no bearing on anything I've said in this thread.
It also ascribes a motive and goal to which I've made no claim. I sincerely hope we're not moving into "When did you stop beating your wife?" territory.
lock2k
Due a Whippin
One would have to be pretty stupid to think God of War isn't profitable. Of course it's profitable. And even on PC.
While you may or may not have a point, and honestly I lost the will to live long ago in this thread so I really can't be sure, past a certain point if you feel a person isn't going to debate properly there comes a time to let it go and focus energy on more useful endeavours. The question above about who you will convince is relevant. Do you think that, if someone is debating dishonestly, your lawyerly deconstruction of their argument is going to make a difference to their opinion? Personally, I think it won't. So better to fight other battles.
I mean we actually know a lot of info here that accounts for the vast majority of costs involved and how much revenue is likely being made, as well as broader industry trends and data on games from the previous few decades that would give us the vast majority of the numbers and allow us to make an informed estimate on the likely range of revenue and profit we're dealing wirh here.
We know the budget was $200m. We know it sold at least 11 million copies in February and it's sold between 19 and 23 million now. We know that's going to mostly be at a $70 RRP, with the likely more expensive special editions offsetting the reduced costs of PS5 pack in sales. We know they take 100% of the revenue from digital sales and that, from years of data on the subject, physical sales would net them between 30% to 50% of the RRP of the game. We know the physical/digital split will be at least 90/10. We know the overhead costs for running the servers would be pennies, and that the money processing fees as a major business wouldn't exceed 5%.
We don't know the marketing budget, although it might be included in that $200m, but based on 3rd party AAA publishers is unlikely to have exceed 3 times that. Other than that, we don't know the costs for Playstation's staff and overheads that would receive a cut, but that is unlikely to be just from this game and instead be taken from the overall revenue the platform makes each year, so is irrelevant.
So we known the cost is at least to $200m to $800m, that it is safe to assume that 90% of sales were giving them about $66 a time, and the other 10% between $22 and $35 dollars a pop.
Those are pretty safe numbers to give an educated estimate that will be safely within probably 20% of the actual figure, accounting for unknown costs or potential lower overheads than what we are guessing at.
If there are going to be significant costs and lower revenue compared to what we know from wider industry data and what information we have, I am happy to discuss them. But if you're just going to dismiss what we do know because of what we hypothetical don't, then you're just saying 'we don't know every single details, so we can't make any kind of educated guess at all' which is not an argument.
I hear you. And I'm reminded recently of the yelps of wounded pain that was rose up when, by simply expressing an opinion, I was accused of trying to control other people.
An opinion. Not a friendly suggestion. Or a sneering drive-by. Or a loaded question.
I shan't yelp in pain - because I'm not that manipulative or dishonest.
So, yes, I hear you.
But I will choose to what degree I debate with others. Not for the pleasure, comfort or convenience of others.
I'm shocked ("Shocked I tell you. Well, not that shocked") that the 'first recommendation' of "Just put them on ignore" that is so frequently and liberally dispensed is so glaringly absent at this juncture.
I guess that's just one more thing I'd better not ask questions about.
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Break down that budget so I can get an understand of what it covers.
There is a difference between "budget to develop a product" and "budget to develop a product and bring it to market".
Oh. Is this "We can't know"?
I was just told such lines of reasoning are for the birds.
Sales are not revenue.
Revenue is not profit.
Educated guesses are not arguments.
Tell me up is down.
Tell me water isn't wet.
Tell me your educated guess is the same as argument.
Ask me "how much" and then change things to "if" and hope I'll never notice the 'argument' having magically changed after the fact.
Just don't tell me to take you seriously or respect your dishonesty.
I hear you. And I'm reminded recently of the yelps of wounded pain that was rose up when, by simply expressing an opinion, I was accused of trying to control other people.
An opinion. Not a friendly suggestion. Or a sneering drive-by. Or a loaded question.
I shan't yelp in pain - because I'm not that manipulative or dishonest.
So, yes, I hear you.
But I will choose to what degree I debate with others. Not for the pleasure, comfort or convenience of others.
I'm shocked ("Shocked I tell you. Well, not that shocked") that the 'first recommendation' of "Just put them on ignore" that is so frequently and liberally dispensed is so glaringly at this juncture.
I guess that's just one more thing I'd better not ask questions about.
Honestly, no idea about that, I don't see all threads, who knows. I told snes nes off for baiting explosive zombie and they kissed and made up, it's life, we fight, some try to act as peacemakers, some pour the petrol, that's forum life. I vaguely recall earlier in this thread some bloke (phil or something like that) made some silly point and you deconstructed it. That's fine, we all saw it and there was enough in that initial exchange that everyone can draw conclusions if they wish. My point is that the ongoing thing, going at it like a dog with a bone, won't change any additional minds, and it seems to me an enormous waste of your time, when you could spend it doing something more fun including looking for other arguments to deconstruct in other threads, and while other people's enjoyment isn't your primary concern (and hopefully you won't suggest they just put you on ignore) it would be nice if you considered that wading through all the lawyerly stuff leaves the thread little room to breathe. Hyper-focusing on one thing seems like an odd choice, one you are free to make and one over which I, as a non-mod, have no power, but as we've known each other online for a good while hopefully you'll take my point in the spirit intended.
Phil_t98
Member
- Platforms
So Sony just takes 30% off actuvision for call of duty and earns over $260 million per year.
www.tweaktown.com
Sony to lose $260 million a year if Call of Duty goes Xbox exclusive
Sony will lose up to an estimated $260 million a year if Call of Duty leaves PlayStation and becomes a full Xbox exclusive.
www.tweaktown.com
That's cool.
I still have two other outstanding questions from, 'arguments', presented in this thread. Happy to discuss them further once I get good-faith answers back on those.
Phil_t98
Member
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so you could do the research for the questions yourself
Hogwarts sold 82% on Ps vs 18% on xbox
so there's that question answered for you
so Call of Duty was 57% on Ps5 and 33% on xbox for modern warfare 2
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I have some bad news for you...
This is deflection.
I've already explained that it is not on me to substantiate your argument for you.
Percentages obfuscate the clarity sought by the question. (Just like how Brand Z suddenly stops giving raw numbers for something and talks in % instead)
No means to verify the details has been provided.
Further questions are raised by a game such as Hogwarts which is available for PC, PS and XB has as PS % of 82 and an XB % of 18 - totalling 100%.
Presumably we are to believe that PC represents 0% of these Hogwarts figures?
And yet, the next pair of percentages - the ones for Call of Duty - add up to 90% not 100%.
This is the very mildest of scrutiny, and yet these numbers do not seem very consistent or reliable. Something raw figures would account for, with verifiable sources to back them up.
So:
One question remains entirely unanswered and the argument it is borne from has been altered after the fact.
One question has a wishy-washy answer that raises questions such as "How do percentages even work?" along with a host of others
One question remains unanswered.
Indeed it is.
So how does PC magically stop being a thing in order to represent 0% of the figures for Hogwarts - for which the PS and XB figures provided add up to 100% between them?
lock2k
Due a Whippin
Now that's fucking funny.
OK. So let's run with that.
So the argument presented is not one based on fact but on probabilities in quantum mechanics.
I, for one, did not anticipate the argument going in this direction.
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I'll explain that one
I've seen this guy do this same thing over and over again with this bizarre lawyerlike deconstruction in different threads. To me he goes on and on about how wrong you are about said topic all the time and did it in numerous threads with this bizarre insult structure. So someone makes a thread about james jaffe criticizing nintendo over breath of the wild things were great but the thread slowly devolved into the usual schrodinger stuff and out of annoyance I just reported him.
And to be crystal clear I agreed with the point he made. I was personally annoyed with him constantly doing this same thing over and over again in different threads.
______________
But back on the point of this thread.
These numbers don't add up at all I mean did sony just decide to sell a 80 million dollar tech demo and take the loss like they do with the playstation?
Thing is sony could take a loss like that 80 million for them is probably not much at all. I mean their worth about 120 billiion dollars I'd say they got loads of cash they can just coast off of.
Sony Net Worth 2010-2024 | SONY
Interactive chart of historical net worth (market cap) for Sony (SONY) over the last 10 years. How much a company is worth is typically represented by its market capitalization, or the current stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding. Sony net worth as of May 02, 2025 is...
www.macrotrends.net
Also I believe they barely break even with the playstation lineup.
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