Quote from: vonVince on May 10, 2013, 05:41:48 PM
They did make profit, whether we like it or not. Do I like it? Not in particular, because I had high expectations for the game - but I can move along and it is better move along - there's little to be gained with "fück this sh1t" commenting.
It didn't make anywhere near a profit. $65mil budget (including marketing) means they needed to sell 1,083,333 copies at $60 to make back the initial investment. However, they don't get back the entirety of the sale due to retail/transportation/storage costs. General return is around 30% of a physical sale and 70% on a digital sale, meaning they needed to sell either 3,611,111 physical copies ($18 return per copy(RPC)) or 1,547,619 digital copies ($42 RPC). With consoles seeing the major part of the sale stats for this title, using the admittedly unreliable VGchartz, we can see ~750,000 physical copies of A:CM sold and ~650,000 of those were on console. This would mean another ~550,000 sales coming from online retailers and direct to drive services like Steam. I'd estimate the largest percentage of those being online orders, as we tracked A:CM at release on steam never going above 25,000 users.
750,000 physical copies sold at full price with an $18 RPC makes $13,500,000
Estimate 500,000 physical copies via online retailers with an $18 RPC makes $9,000,000
Estimate 50,000 digital copies with a $42 RPC makes $2,100,000
That makes an estimated current return of $24,600,000. Factor in exchange rates for the euro and the pound sterling, a few thousand extra dollars from collectors editions and a significant drop from their RPC from a game on sale and you see that number drop even further. A $10 game sold at retail will generally find a return of $3 to the publisher, ($7 digital download, which is why so many indie steam games are priced around the $10-$12 mark) and I feel I can say pretty emphatically they've made less than $20 mil back on A:CM so far.
These small RPC margins are why you see games selling in the multi-millions like Tomb Raider, Resi Evil 6, Hitman Absolution etc. reported as 'disappointing' and 'under-performing sales targets'.