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Comment by jimwalsh | Hacker News Reader

Not really. Their last game (Infinite) was a flop (AAA game that only sold 4m units). Take Two control the money, and with those kinds of results (huge team of 300 something, that took six plus years to create Infinite) you can imagine they weren't lining up to do another title. So Ken did what he could so that some of the studio would stay alive.

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4M units is as of last summer (March to August), they've sold more than that by now. That's comparable to Bioshock 2 sales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_Infinite#Sales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_2#Sales

I disagree with your characterization of Bioshock Infinite as a "flop." Usually, calling something a "flop" means that it was wildly unsuccessful. Infinite may not have re-couped its investment, but it was not wildly unsuccessful. That would be selling under, say, 100,000 units.

(Keep in mind this is a semantic distinction, and not a value judgement of the game itself.)

>>Usually, calling something a "flop" means that it was wildly unsuccessful.

To me, "flop" means it failed to meet the rather ambitious expectations, and instead performed only moderately well.

So what would you call something that actually 'flops' by the English definition standard? A cataclysmic failure bound to ruin any and all associated with it?

The problem being, AAA game development is hit driven enough that a common publishing strategy is blockbuster tentpole or bust.

Many of the games produced are fine games, and some even sell well, but may not match the (possibly extremely overoptimistic) financial forecasts. So, "flop" is probably pejorative. It does fit what the business reaction seems to be to some of these games, but that may be a problem originating with something other than the game.

The last game that studio published was 6 years ago - Bioshock in 2007; Bioshock 2 was shipped by another studio. If they had 100+ employees (not unreasonable for a AAA game studio), they could have incurred personnel costs of $60M+ for the game's development. Which could definitely be considered a failure in the eyes of a game that only shipped 4MM games.

Sure, but just look at the numbers - let's firstly boost the number to 300 employees, not 100, I think that's closer to real, with an everage salary of around $60k. That puts salaries at about $180m. But, they sold 4 million copies at about $60 each, which makes $240m profit. Allowing for a decent ad spend, you're still looking at a back of the envelope break-even. OK, I get that investors might be bummed about that, but it's enough money to mean that they live to fight another day, have another crack at hitting it out of the park.

As others have noted, AAA games are hit-based propositions. You pretty much have a few (3-5) titles that make all of the money each year, another 10 or so that hold the line, and everyone else loses. It's the last group that are flops, the second group are the par result. I think we can safely say that Bioshock Infinite was in the second group...

The $240m figure is not profit, it's gross income. Taxes, marketing costs and distribution costs will dwarf that figure. In some cases, AAA games can even spend more on marketing than wages.

I think 60$ average is a bit high

Source: I bought it on Steam for 8€

lol yea i bought this for.... $7.50 and got the DLC bundle (which sucked) for about 5 IIRC

they certainly do not get the full 60 per copy. I am not sure what current publishing deals are set at but I would be surprised if they even see 40

For PC games, Hard copies return roughly 40-45% of the title to the publisher.

Valve gets a 30% slice for distribution on Steam.

I do not know what the breakdown of costs are on consoles, but I assume both Sony and MS still get a cut of the sales.

Consider that the bulk of a game's sales will be realized during the first week, and the rapid time to discount, it's no wonder T2 decided to pull the cord on Irrational Games.

Yup. Usually I remember the rubric being about $30 back to the publisher on a $60-$70 title. MS/Sony each take a cut and so does the distributor (Steam, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc). Plus, as pointed out in comments below, there's also the fact that not all copies were sold at full price. So you're looking AT BEST at $120M in revenue, plus Irrational had TV ads and other large costs in addition to their staffing.

Right, but there is a difference between a "failure" and a "flop."

There isn't one in terms of publisher behavior. Either way the series gets axed.

Kind of odd that 4m units is considered a flop. Jim Sterling did a video on that idea of what AAA "success" in terms of sales is awhile ago:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/712...

Wasn't it widely considered one of the best games of the year? How did it flop?

Just like he said: Though it was an amazing game (I bought it opening day), it only sold 4m units. Unfortunate that that's considered a flop.

By comparison, Modern Warfare 3 sold 10m copies on day one.

And thats sad... More mindless military shooters year after year after year

It was such an amazing game. Is this just like Looking Glass and Terra Nova?

Well LGS made about three games after Terra Nova, so maybe not. Their last full game was Thief 2 which I think made money but not enough to warrant them being kept alive in the wake of the Daikatana fiasco.

http://www.ttlg.com/articles/lgsclosing.asp

Terra Nova was the disaster that led to their demise. It's a shame because I was one of the 100,000 people that purchased it, and it is still one of my favourite games of all time. It's up there with SS2, Half Life, Quake.

The 16th best-selling game of 2013 was a flop?

http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/16/100-best-selling-video-games-o...

Considering how much it must have cost to produce, yeah it's believable. #6 on the list was also considered a failure for not selling enough copies.

Rough outline of the business plan behind most AAA titles:

1. Assume all 10 of us have a >50% chance at being among the year's top 3 sellers.

2. Scale budget according to assumptions from step 1.

Note that number 6 on that list is Tomb Raider, which Square Enix publicly declared to be a flop:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-26-tomb-raider-has...

Well, they said it missed the sales target. The game did make Square Enix a profit:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.839763-Tomb-Ra...

4 million in retail, that's excluding Steam and other digital distribution platforms. I know a lot of gamers, but none of them buy games in retail.

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