550 million in the first month (Gaming)

by Durandal, Tuesday, April 05, 2016, 22:08 (3157 days ago) @ Cody Miller

With preorders and first month sales, Bungie pulled in 550 million. This number also doesn't include the money Sony put in for their special content.

The rumored cost of production for the game is 500 million.

So at bare minimum, Bungie made 50 million and has budget for their live team to cover 2 years. Xbox's installed user base is something like 76 million. Playstation is something around 25-48 million. At $60 dollars a game, a 500 million AAA title needs 8.4 million buyers. That's only about 7% of the overall installed base. A 7% take rate for a game by a well known developer with a string of successes is not out of the question.

By comparison Gears of War sold 6.4 million over its total run. COD MW 4's total sales are 9.4 M.

Bungie is competing with the big dogs, at the top of the market for the highest quality games. This is always going to be a tight market with lots of volatility. It's easy to mismanage yourself out of business like Silicon Knights. In light of that, the long term deal with Activision is a smart move to secure funding ahead of time, so even if Destiny 1 was a flop, the studio still had a source of funding to make a sun singer rez move for Destiny 2.

From an industry perspective there is lots of room for games, from F2P and low cost independent runs to these AAA titles. The barriers to games development drop every year as standard tools and assets become more common place. Look at how many companies provide licensed physics models, graphics engines and art stock. It used to be you had to develop all of that yourself, now even Google is working on a free engine. The market also supports different modes, from stuff on phones and tablets to our more complicated AAA titles. The market is very diverse, with lots of options. Heck, look at 343 making Halo tablet apps as backup to the main titles. If Bungie had a phone game that let you assign your guardians to strikes in an RTS style format, while you played your ghost and managed support tasks from above, how many of you would buy that as well? If it gave you loot in game?