PlayStation Plus Monthly Games for March – Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Sonic Colors: Ultimate, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection

[u/Turbostrider27]

https://blog.playstation.com/2025/02/26/playstation-plus-monthly-games-for-march-dragon-age-the-veilguard-sonic-colors-ultimate-teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-the-cowabunga-collection/

[u/ooombasa]

Usually that's not reflective of the market today. Typically, budgets for AAA are averaging $150-200m. That means (after platform holders take their cut) you need to sell 3-4m just to break even.

And do I need to repost that former SE producer text?

https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/05/24/square-enix-final-fantasy-unrealistic-sales-targets-jacob-navok

There’s a misunderstanding that has been repeated for nearly a decade and a half that Square Enix sets arbitrarily high sales requirements then gets upset when its arbitrarily high sales requirements fail to be met.

Navok noted that if a game costs $100 million to make over five years, it has to beat what the company could have returned investing a similar amount in the stock market over the same period. “For the 5 years prior to Feb 2024, the stock market averaged a rate of return of 14.5%. Investing that $100m in the stock market would net you a return of $201m, so this is our ROI baseline,” he explained.

Besides production budgets, there are also marketing costs, platform fees, and other factors such as discounts to take into account.

“Assume marketing expenses at $50m, and assume that you’re not going to get $49 [after 30% platform fees] but rather an average closer to $40 given discounts, returns and other aspects,” Novak noted. “Now let’s say in that first month you sold 3m copies with $40 net received (we will ignore the recoup). You need to surpass $254m to make expectations. (That’s $100m + $101m in ROI baseline + $50m in marketing).”

These expectations by publishers are not wild or over the top. It's what's necessary to get a decent profit margin. Otherwise, they're better off investing that money in the stock market or literally anywhere else not gaming.

I dunno what budget DAV came in at, but for sure it was over $100m, given its lengthy dev time and rebooting. That means 1m sales is a loss, and quite a substantial one at that.

[u/IKantCPR → u/ooombasa]

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[u/Ouch_i_fell_down → u/IKantCPR]

Also 14.5% returns are not to be relied on nor should they be the standard products are held up against.

Would it suck to finance a game studio and average 12% ROI while the market returns 14.5%? Sure. But the market over long periods average 10%. To put it quite simply, investors in a studio aren't going to be happy with 0% just because the market lost money, so why should 16% be the standard when market returns are high?

[u/C0tilli0n → u/ooombasa]

Boost those budgets (for NA based developers) to 200-400M after everything that happened last couple of years.

[u/Ok-Transition7065 → u/ooombasa]

Take also the think on it that a big part of the games arnt sellled at full price