http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17607
Gamedaily do another estimation and give the number of 2.48M a bit more than Halo 2.
Halo 3 Registers Biggest Day in US Entertainment History with $170 Million in Sales
- Thread starter 22psi
- Start date
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/feature/?id=17607
Gamedaily do another estimation and give the number of 2.48M a bit more than Halo 2.
Actually shifty, since companies choose projects after deflating the project value for risk, im sure a lot of the companies would have gone for the Book. You have virtually no expenses for the book, wheras a halo 3 game costs $50 million to make. Now discount future project cash flow on WACC, and it doesn't look all that good compared to a book.
One of the users in the other thread mentioned that his friend's copy was numbered ~415K. Each of the Legendary Editions have a unique number signifying the unit produced. So unless Microsoft gave away 250,000 units for free, their calculation is a bit off.
Virtually none for the book? I'm sure rowling doesn't need the money, but I'm betting she's getting paid and probably a higher percentage of the profits than bungie.
ill say its more likely ppl choose the unit depending on want give the most favourable result depending o their POV :]
does this $170million include halo3 xb360s at ~$400 a pop?
Another odd thing in that write-up is they express amazement the game "didn't even sell out".
I dunno about you but, a game selling out is pretty much a insult to me. It's not like hardware, all you have to do is stamp more discs..
Thye're not paid wages up front to create the product though. A writer writes their book for no money (unless they've landed themselves a contract) and then gets a fee if the book sells. Which means costs to create a book are nothing other than manufacturing and marketing. Books are pretty expensive to make for what they are, but relative to wages for 100 developers for 2-3 years, plus the fact you can scale production based on demand to ensure little over-expenditure, managing expensive relative to profits is a darned site easier.
Are we talking about some unknown author here?
Any old author. Authors often write a book and see if they can sell, but sometimes they land a contract to produce a series or whatever with a (often significant, but still peanuts relative to developer costs) advance. So if you're a publishing house who wants Mr. Mucklesborough to write you a series of 3 adventure stories, you may pay him £100,000 up front - and that's the development cost of the book, versus many millions for a AAA game. Add to that some wages for editors and marketeers, and the printing costs which scale with how much you produce so you don't have an up-front cost, and the costs of books is clearly way, way down versus the costs of producing a game.
The point I wanted to make is that the author in question, is J.K Rowling. While I have no idea what her contract looks like, I'm sure if she wanted millions up front, she would have gotten it for deathly hallows.
Highly unlikely, because when the first book was accepted, she entered into a contract to write all 7. And back then she was an unknown, with no expectations, so any advance and contract she'd jump at! Even then, that'd just be a very rare exception to the way book businesses are run, which was the point about business choices, and why dollar amounts are more important than units.
And the norm for a video game is 170 million in day 1 sales? We're hardly discussing 'the norm'
anyway this is pointless.
Mintmaster
Veteran
The whole point of unit sales of consoles is that they generate money with software. Dollar figures for units sales is almost meaningless, because $1B in PS3 sales could actually mean $200M loss for Sony, whereas $500M sales of Wii could mean $100M profit for Nintendo. All console makers aim for more or less break even (i.e. usually +/- 20% or so, IMO), so $ sales don't really say much about what the product does for the company.
Software, on the other hand, has universally high gross margins. Total $ sales figures are pretty fair to compare across consoles. The whole point of the business is to maximize the $ value here.
Mintmaster
Veteran
I do not think MS knows exactly what they sell anymore than NPD..MS only knows exactly how many they ship, say, to Wal Mart. I dont think Wal Mart then reports back to MS exactly how much they sold in any given time frame. Same for other retailers, especially when you get down to the myriad small ones..
I doubt stores are in the business of giving away their sales totals to all companies who's products they carry, as a practical matter if nothing else. That is why MS and Sony comment on the NPD's each month. And I assume they also pay the tens of thousands for full NPD subscriptions..
Now, Sony recently qouted a 100% sales increase at the 5 largest retailers..the corps probably have some visibilty to the largest chains..those largest chains also control most of the video game market..Wal Mart, Target, Gamestop, and Best Buy are a very high percent of the total..
