All day me and the rest of the Destructoid staff (well, really just me, Nick, and Joe) have been talking about GTA:Chinatown Wars' and MadWorld's less than stellar sales. Would the games have sold better on other consoles, how good are these two games to begin with, if any Clover/Platinum games have really sold (answer; they haven't), if Nintendo is to blame for 3rd parties' struggles; all topics of debate that the three of us clearly have different perspectives on.

As fun as it was to engage with my like-minded but disagreeable friends on such matters, in the back of my head I kept thinking "What the hell do I know?" Really, what do I know about how much it cost to make GTA:CW or MadWorld?

I mean, it doesn't take an expert to know that neither game had a Resident Evil 5 or GTA IV-sized budget, but what game does? I wouldn't be surprised if with all the liscensed music, voice work, and obviously pricier graphics, that GTA IV cost at least ten times more than GTA:CW to make. However, I wouldn't bet one thin dime that I know what the hell I'm talking about. As far as I know, GTA IV cost fifty times, or a hundred times more to make than GTA:CW.

So much of that ratio has to do with how responsible, organized, and resourceful the teams behind the games were. Robert Rodriguez can make a blockbuster special effects movie for 10 million dollars, where other directors need ten or twenty times that to achieve the same results. I'm sure that's it's the same way with games. So, if the GTA:CW team was really good, is it possible that the game has already made more than it needs to at this point in it's life cycle to turn a profit?

Of course, Rockstar is bound to say that the game is already a huge success and they're making tons of money off it, but they have to do that. If they start saying the game was a disappointment, then people are of course less likely to buy it. We'll likely never know if the game was a "success" or not.

Then there's MadWorld, a game that I view as an instant classic, but at the same token, I can see why Anthony sees it as just a solid rental. Personally, I wasn't surprised that a game from a studio with a track record for underappreciated, underselling games (I'm looking at you, God Hand and Okami) didn't manage to strike gold with a Black-and-White action game that many reviewers claim to have beaten in four hours.

All amateur analysis aside; the real question remains, how much does MadWorld have to sell in order to make a profit? I'm guessing that given its smaller size, shorter script, but more expensive "talent "(Proops and Dimaggio are probably more expensive than your average voice actors), MadWorld probably cost around the same money to make as No More Heroes, or maybe de Blob (total bullshit guesses).

Neither of those games have cracked the 1 million sales ceiling, but they both have been declared successes by their publishers, and have sequels on the way. I don't think either sold 66,000 in their opening month either, which is what MadWorld reportedly made here in the states.

So does that mean that at this rate, MadWorld too will be considered a success? Is it possible that Sega isn't lying when they say they're happy with the game's sales so far?

Then there's Valkyria Chronicles, a game that maybe didn't cost that much more than your average Wii game. It's been considered to be a commercial flop, but not only did it get it's own anime series and art books, but it's rumored to have a sequel in the works as well. Does that mean the game actually made money?

Can any of use claim to know?

I guess my point is, we only care about game sales because we want to see more of the games that we really like. We want to be able to predict (in these cases, within one or two months of release) if a game is going to get a sequel or not. We try to predict this future by watching a how well out favorite games sell.

We watch their sales with an intensity that would even make these Munchables jealous.



Does it make any sense to do this? Do we really learn anything by keeping track of a game's sales? Tim Schafer sure doesn't think so, and he should know. He's made plenty of games that have flopped, and yet he still keeps coming.

He's not alone in that.

Despite many flops, Clover/Platinum keeps coming. Grasshopper keeps coming. The Harvest Moon games keep coming. The Phoenix Wright games keep coming. Crappy, 3D Sonic games keep coming.

Uwe Boll keeps coming.

To ignorant saps like us, it doesn't look like any of them make money, but clearly they must be.

So I ask you, what's the point in keeping track of a game's sales if we don't have any idea how much the game cost to make?