500 MILLION DOLLARS!

Wow that's confidence.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/06/activision-destiny-idUSL2N0NQ0E220140506

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Wow that's confidence.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/06/activision-destiny-idUSL2N0NQ0E220140506

Wow.

"To break even, Activision would have to sell about 15 million to 16 million units of a $60 game, analysts said."

Ok this is clearly impossible (or rather extremely unlikely), so I have to ask where they expect the rest of the money is going to come from.

You are going to be gouged on DLC, I guarantee it.

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Wow that's confidence.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/06/activision-destiny-idUSL2N0NQ0E220140506

Wow.

"To break even, Activision would have to sell about 15 million to 16 million units of a $60 game, analysts said."

Ok this is clearly impossible (or rather extremely unlikely), so I have to ask where they expect the rest of the money is going to come from.

You are going to be gouged on DLC, I guarantee it.

I believe this is an unfair calculation. $500 million is what Activision is spending on Destiny, the franchise - not Destiny, the first game. They're investing heavily now on systems (i.e. Grognok), hardware, infrastructure, etc, which will make future games cheaper to develop.

"The spokesperson added that investment in the next generation engine and a "robust backend infrastructure are upfront expenditures that should reduce future product development costs."

"Over the long term, we expect the ultimate product costs to be roughly in line with other Triple-A titles."

It's silly to calculate how many copies Destiny 1 needs to sell in order to break even on a decade-long investment. That's similar to calculating how many tickets need to be sold in one season to break even on a new stadium.

(Although they better start advertising for Xbox soon or at least do an interview with Major Nelson or something; some people probably think it's Playstation only.)

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I believe this is an unfair calculation. $500 million is what Activision is spending on Destiny, the franchise - not Destiny, the first game.

It's unclear. The only part of the article that supposedly comes directly from Activision is the top few paragraphs, where the term "franchise" is used.
The rest of the article assumes that $500 is directly associated with the first game, but it's unclear where the logical leap happens; is the first part of the article simply imprecisely presented? I dunno.

That being said, I would have guessed on the order of a couple hundred million for the first game, considering the development time and team size. Destiny is going to be a very high-budget game.

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(Although they better start advertising for Xbox soon or at least do an interview with Major Nelson or something; some people probably think it's Playstation only.)

Xbox UK actually just tweeted this a few days ago:

https://twitter.com/xboxuk/status/463282053614927875

Hopefully that's the start of a push by Xbox at least. I'm interested to see how much marketing goes into the Xbox side of things since Activision seems to have the same kind of deal they have with Xbox and Call of Duty.

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in addition to the games, you will have strategy guides, shirts, controllers, skinned consoles, dlc, koozies, flame throwers (the kids really love that one), etc.

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I once read somewhere that more than half of the revenues from the 'Star Wars' franchise came from toys and games - not the films.

Custom Guardian action figures. Destiny themed Sony Xperia Z3. Competitive league streaming rights? Who knows.

Saying 'They'll never sell 16 million!' is looking at the situation very naively. If individual people are willing to spend a lot on your franchise you don't need to convince a lot of people.

Bungie are also going to be selling to a potential market more than 3 times the size of any they've sold to in more than a decade.

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Saying 'They'll never sell 16 million!' is looking at the situation very naively. If individual people are willing to spend a lot on your franchise you don't need to convince a lot of people.

Yeah I also think it's very possible they can sell 16 million. The Halo games sold as many as 11.87 million (Halo 3) from best estimates, so a multi-console release could definitely hit 16 million. Whether it WILL or not remains to be seen, but it's definitely possible.

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in addition to the games, you will have strategy guides, shirts, controllers, skinned consoles, dlc, koozies, flame throwers (the kids really love that one), etc.

Hahahahaha! Nice, Yogurt! You missed lunch boxes in there

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Hahahahaha! Nice, Yogurt! You missed lunch boxes in there

Don't you see the danger, Bungie, in what you're doing? The Traveler's force is the most awesome power the planet has ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that found his dad's gun. I'll tell you the problem with the space magic that you're using here. It didn't acquire any discipline to attain it. You read what other guardians have done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the Traveler's power for yourself so therefore you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of guardians to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew you had it, you patented it and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunch box. And now you're selling it! You wanna sell it!

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Hahahrawrrahaha.

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Lots of DLC and a season pass seems likely. Only saving grace is you would assume Destiny 2,3 etc will not cost anywhere near as much to produce and that is where the money is really coming from. Though $500million seems like quite a big setup cost with no guarantee of making money off the first game. And if it flops in relative terms(i.e. lower than ~8million copies sold) then will there be anyway to make that money back?

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Wow that's confidence.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/06/activision-destiny-idUSL2N0NQ0E220140506

Wow.

"To break even, Activision would have to sell about 15 million to 16 million units of a $60 game, analysts said."

Ok this is clearly impossible (or rather extremely unlikely), so I have to ask where they expect the rest of the money is going to come from.

You are going to be gouged on DLC, I guarantee it.

Don't you mean we? :)

It looks like GTA V has sold ~30 million copies, so not out of the question. But, ambitious to be sure.

A bigger risk...what if gaming undergoes some revolutionary change in, say, 4 years? I wonder how much flex Bungie has built in? A ton, I guess. But as an engineering consideration...wowza.

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They might reach enough sales with cross platform release on everything... but they already nixed PC, which is probably the largest market they could've sold it on.

I don't understand what these guys are doing. Is Jason Jones even in charge?

Marty fired
Uninspiring gameplay
$500m budget
Not coming out on PC

This is starting to build into a disaster.

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Marty fired

$500m budget

Perhaps one lead to the other?

Jones: Marty, have you seen where all the dev budget wen-....

*Marty in skivys about to dive into money pool*

Jones: I thought you supposed to be making music!

Marty: The sound of diving into $500 million is...

*Marty puts on sunglasses*

Marty: ...Music to my ears.

Jones:.....

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I don't want to start an argument about me disagreeing with you, BUT I do have to point out that the $500m budget is actually what Activision has invested in the game, this is not Bungie's budget. I don't know how big of a distinction it is but is important to make as it includes things like marketing (most likely even marketing we haven't seen yet) a lot of which Activision is solely in charge of.

Not to mention a lot of this is, as they've stated in the past, investment in the franchise and not just in the first game.

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They might reach enough sales with cross platform release on everything... but they already nixed PC, which is probably the largest market they could've sold it on.

I don't understand what these guys are doing. Is Jason Jones even in charge?

Marty fired
Uninspiring gameplay
$500m budget
Not coming out on PC

This is starting to build into a disaster.

Too much "might" and "probably" to start predicting disaster, I think. Aliens: Colonial Marines was a disaster. Destiny isn't even out in the wild yet.

So let's break out some skepticism here, yeah?

What's the size of the console market, broken down between Sony and XBOX? What's the size of the PC market? Can I get some stats up here plz. Next, let's see how "uninspired" the gameplay is once the Beta comes out. We'll finally have some experience then. The 500 million dollar budget makes sense when you're thinking of a 10 year game plan for a AAA game series (along with all the other knicknacks and wackadoodles). We also still know next to nothing about Marty's termination, and have only our emotions and good feeling to decide it's absolutely a Bad Thing for Bungie and the Doom to End All Dooms.

Also, have you noticed how Bungie employees talk about working at there? Seems to me Jason is a lead, per se, but it's quite a grassroots, collaborative organization. Valve-like, but with a little bit more organization. Maybe even a little bit anarchist.

To say "Is Jason Jones even in charge?" is kind of ridiculous, really. It's not even a good question as far as I can tell.

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What's the size of the console market, broken down between Sony and XBOX?

Quick googling:

80 million PS3's
80 million Xbox 360
7 million PS4s
5 million Xbox Ones

-PS4 and Xbox One likely to rise substantially over the next 4 months

What's the size of the PC market?

75 million active steam users

Difficult to numbers for the total market though.

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What's the size of the console market, broken down between Sony and XBOX?

Quick googling:

80 million PS3's
80 million Xbox 360
7 million PS4s
5 million Xbox Ones

-PS4 and Xbox One likely to rise substantially over the next 4 months

What's the size of the PC market?

75 million active steam users

Difficult to numbers for the total market though.

Awesome. Thank you, RC.

So 172 million consoles out there, give or take, with likelyhood of growth. How many are offline only, or don't play multiplayer games for whatever reason. How many people would double, triple, or quadruple dip?

How many of those folks have PCs too? Quintuple dip? How many of those active Steam users have PCs that would run Destiny? How does Steam define "active?" Does this include non-PC computing devices? Does selling to this group of people fit in with Activision's and Bungie's goals as far as Destiny's business model is concerned? Say what you want about them, but the know how to make money.

I'm no business man, but seems like under just some basic scrutiny, not selling Destiny on PC and spending 500 million dollars doesn't seem like such a slam dunk disaster.

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So 172 million consoles out there, give or take, with likelyhood of growth.

Be careful with those numbers. The number of actively-gaming PS360's out there is nowhere near 160M, plenty of people who have both consoles won't double-dip (making those numbers effectively smaller), and the existence of eighth-gen versions has seemingly been making people very nervous about buying the last-gen versions (cross-gen multiplats have been seeing pretty low sales on PS360; the argument that the "big install base" should cause seventh-gen versions to outsell eighth-gen versions hasn't really been holding up).

On the other hand, if the PS4 has kept up the sales pace, it's probably near 8M by now. The XB1 5M numbers were "sold to retailer" numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the machine has sold through comfortably over 4M at this point. The eighth-gen consoles are selling decently, especially PS4, and their numbers mean more since the sales numbers are almost entirely users who are still actively gaming on that platform.

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On the other hand, if the PS4 has kept up the sales pace, it's probably near 8M by now. The XB1 5M numbers were "sold to retailer" numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the machine has sold through comfortably over 4M at this point. The eighth-gen consoles are selling decently, especially PS4, and their numbers mean more since the sales numbers are almost entirely users who are still actively gaming on that platform.

These are great points about the next-gen consoles. I'm amazed how well both systems are selling compared to the numbers for the 7th generation launches.

Also it bugs the hell out of me when articles say things like "Xbox One is floundering!" Really? 4 million plus sales in about 6 months is "floundering"?

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These are great points about the next-gen consoles. I'm amazed how well both systems are selling compared to the numbers for the 7th generation launches.

I'm not amazed at the difference in the launches. Seventh gen was very long, and even the WiiU had a decently large launch (with overall very front-loaded sales).

Also, PS360 both had very rocky launch periods, for various reasons.

Also it bugs the hell out of me when articles say things like "Xbox One is floundering!" Really? 4 million plus sales in about 6 months is "floundering"?

Probably because XB1's sales haven't been anything special during 2014. Both XB1 and PS4 launched huge, but PS4 has continued to sell at an unusually good pace.

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Probably because XB1's sales haven't been anything special during 2014. Both XB1 and PS4 launched huge, but PS4 has continued to sell at an unusually good pace.

That is true, but normally releases are what sell consoles and aside from Titanfall (which did drive a significant number of sales) there really hasn't been much to drive console sales. The more surprising thing to me is that the PS4 has continued to sell pretty steadily despite not a lot of new releases.

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Also it bugs the hell out of me when articles say things like "Xbox One is floundering!" Really? 4 million plus sales in about 6 months is "floundering"?

That's ultimately my point here with this whole little tangent. Declarations of doom and glood, when put under even a little scrutiny, don't appear to be as slam dunk.

Not to say the opposite is true, that declarations of awesomeness are true, or those that fit my bias, so let's just disarm that little rhetorical trick right now mmmmmmmk?

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The 500 million dollar budget makes sense when you're thinking of a 10 year game plan for a AAA game series (along with all the other knicknacks and wackadoodles).

Yeah, this could use clarification.

Is it 500 million for Destiny plus marketing, or 500 million for Destiny, Destiny 2, Destiny Infinity, and all the DLC for each plus marketing over the next ten years?

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The 500 million dollar budget makes sense when you're thinking of a 10 year game plan for a AAA game series (along with all the other knicknacks and wackadoodles).

Yeah, this could use clarification.

Is it 500 million for Destiny plus marketing, or 500 million for Destiny, Destiny 2, Destiny Infinity, and all the DLC for each plus marketing over the next ten years?

Probably the later, because the figure is so huge, which is probably why it's actually the former.

The Alex Rodriguez of video games. Haha.

EDIT: Also, considering how much Activision has made off of CoD, I suppose we can thank CoD for so much investment available for Destiny. :P

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One million bucks an employee. That's how it works, right? Programmers gotta be ballin'.

Either that, or Jason Jones sits atop a mountain of loose bills in the center of a giant bank vault ala Scrooge McDuck and issues judgements and decrees via megaphone to those intrepid employees who venture to seek an audience. Be Brave.

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As great as this image is, Jason is actually super cool about having a desk on the floor along with everyone else. This is less funny than your post! But it's something that's struck me since I started here - a lot of work gets done simply because it's possible to walk over to anyone you need and get their input.

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If Destiny has been prepared to be a production line of standardized retail products then a huge upfront expenditure for both development and advertising could pay off.

I.E What you see functionally and graphically day one, may be what you will see ~10 years from now. If the Destiny engine remains essentially the same then only the add-on products need be different. Imagine how cheaply and easily a Halo 2 and 3 would have been to make if they had been built only from the Halo CE engine. It's reality was quite different from that for many reasons related to burgeoning technology. We know that the current consoles have X capacity and won't change much for this lifecycle. Therefore with proper development, only the products using the engine need to change.

I.E. What if Bungie has no intention of re-inventing their base product for 10 years.

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500 MILLION DOLLARS! (Destiny)