Vita makes more money for more devs, says Sony

GamesIndustry: "Handheld maker pushing system as an attractive alternative to iOS and Android development."

[nades_all_night]

Seems pretty logical to me. I know they will be getting some of my loot soon enough.

[zeee]

now that the price is lower than before, I know I'll be getting one around christmas.

[jujubee88]

Yeah, now that both the system and memory card prices are finally going down it's become a lot more of a no brainer. ^^

[Lwhit6]

Why dont you just get it on christmas?? lololololololololololo0lololol

[zeee]

jujubee88: To be honest, the memory card prices are still fairly high. Higher than they should anyway.

Lwhite6: Because come black friday, they will be pushing bundles for perhaps the same price. So I am going to wait. Also because I just burned a lot of cash on something else.

[Vandamme21]

Vita needs some really good exclusives games.

[Hicken]

Vita has quite a few. You should look em up.

[Joe913]

People will never be happy with it they have a bunch of original games for the vita but nobody likes them cause they are not known franchises then if a company put out a game from a known franchise then its just a port for example Uncharted vita to me can stand on its own not as pretty as Uncharted 3 but it was still a fun game and I bet if we do get a COD ghost ppl will just complain that it is a port and not a original COD which I do not want I would like a COD ghost on vita and hope you can play against ppl on their ps3 or 4 that would be cool. I do think since the price was dropped they will sell like crazy like when Japan dropped the price.

[Rockets12]

Over a year and it has only a few exclusive games. Hooray! Don't get me wrong, I love my vita and I enjoy playing the games, but I see what they mean when they say it needs more. I'll gladly play Persona, Ys, Final Fantasy, Monster Hunter, Valkyria Chronicles, etc though. That's a lot of gameplay

[bothebo]

Really, why don't you name some that have come out this year in the west? Oh wait! Vandamme21 is more than right, we need more content and exclusives IN THE FUTURE. It didn't take me long to get through the games I wanted to play on the Vita. Now what?

[Salooh]

@ joe
Don't take it seriously but this is how i see it . :)
You see me complaining about uncharted or gravity rush or little big planet ?. No , i only complain because they focus on indies and not this type of games that people want. Where is tekken ? GTA , BF , COD , RPGS ..etc

So if they port a game i already played it's my fault ?. Porting new games is better , for example , why don't they port borderland 3 when it comes out ?. Wouldn't that be better ?. I'm glad people will enjoy the awesome Borderland 2 in the vita though ^^. And some ports suuuucks like jack and daxter collection which i was planning to buy the day it release .

People don't complain for stupid reason. I don't think the price will change the situation of the vita that much . The error is in lack of AAA games . No one would ever complain about it when it happens , look how ps3 is doing right now , is it because of indies ? no it's because of AAA games. People don't care about indies a lot , it's just extra thing to me..

[Death]

I couldn't agree more Vandamme21. The Vita needs Vita specific games and exclusives more than they needed a price cut. Hopefully the lower price will increase sales so more devs give it a look. Glad to see Sony finally listening to fans and lowering the memory card prices. Since launch they have been stupid high. All good signs.

[bothebo]

I agree with him too. As someone who owns a Vita I would have liked to hear more software, but the price drop should improve the amount of software we will be getting if it sells enough, we might just have to wait a while though. Don't really care about memory cards because I have plus and I can just upload my saves and redownload them. For future owners this helps but not so much for people who already own a Vita.

[cee773]

@negatve

I wish n4g had negative bubbles for trolls like you

[sdozzo]

Facebook login.

[GdaTyler]

He has one bubble lol. Not worth acknowledging.

[ABizzel1]

Well I guess it depends on the kind of game you make. AAA games are rumored to cost $10 million on Vita, so as long as you sell 300,000 copies you'll make a profit.

[Mustang300C2012]

There have been games struggling to reach that number.

[ABizzel1]

True, but the only game to fail with a possible budget that high seems to be Resistance Burning Skies and even then it sold over 200k copies, so it's possible it could have broke even.

Most of the games to sell 100k and less are ports and indie like games and the cost of porting games to the Wii U is a bit over $1 million, so I doubt it cost that much to do the same for Vita. But even if it does the game needs a mere 30,000 in sales to recoup the porting cost, and the only core game to sell that low was Dead of Alive 5 which is just over 30,000.

The handheld needs sales to pick up, and so will developer support since they'll have a better chance of making a profit now. So maybe this price cut was the right call, as we'll see more games and possibly more exclusives in the future.

[Hicken]

Yeah, that's been the case on all consoles since the dawn of time.

[Mustang300C2012]

Hicken,

Not all consoles struggle in their first year but I know how sensitive you get when it comes to the Vita.

[Death]

10,000,000/300,000=33.33

High retail is $39.99. about 25% of that is retailer profit. They will pay approx $29.99 from the distributor. The console manufacturer gets royalties which are close to 20%. Marketing typically gets 15% of each games sale too. Last I checked shipping wasn't free. That leaves about 45% to go back to the publisher and developer on each game sold. If the game cost 10 million to develop and they receive about 15% (Publisher gets 30%), how many games need to be sold to cover 10 million? It would be around 1.7 million copies at full retail of $39.99 to break even. That number goes up as retail prices go down.

You sell 300,000 copies and you will be looking for a job. This is why developers are being shut down and indies are looking to self publish. Indies are not about making games better, it's about cutting costs, lowering risks and trying to make a profit. In many ways, indie games are anti-console. The reason they are being embraced is due to the fact ios/mobile games are cutting into console profits. By publishing games that are more simplified, todays consoles are being under used.

[bothebo]

Brilliantly said in the second paragraph. Indies do nothing for consoles and are hardly revolutionary as they try to keep their game simple and use old formulas. Anyway, do you think by shoving indie games down console owner's throats they'll actually get more of the market share back? I want to hear your thoughts on this because I think it is futile and will diminish the quality of game libraries.

[ABizzel1]

@Death

Yes I was using the flat $40 figures, and yes there's more to it, but your chart from 2011 doesn't hold true anymore, especially with more games going digital thus reducing fees and percentages normally paid to retail?

There's a reason why developers have moved to making games for iOS. Their 70:30 deal means they make more money digitally than they do at retail, and is why many prefer you buy their game of of service like iOS, Android, and Steam versus retail.

M$ and Sony are also using this ratio for their PSN and XBL games going forward. Best of all you no longer need a publisher to get your games on either console, and that has been true for Vita since May.

Retailers sales are dropping constantly for online retailers (Amazon), and used markets and I guarantee you those percentages aren't up to 20% anymore (more like 5% - 10%). Vita games don't use, get, or need the same marketing budget as a console game and their budget isn't 15% (more like 5%). Sony has since then lowered it's console fee to 10%, because at the time they needed to get more developers working on PS so they cut it in half, and there has been no word on it ever going back up.

So developers are losing out on 25% off the top on retail game sales, but the fact is that they have to get a publisher for retail sales in order to meet the demands for a worldwide launch, and so that's where the percentage changes. But again that percentage I guarantee you has dropped now that studios can self publish, kickstarter, etc... a publisher is only needed for brand recognition or retail sales. Developers likely make 40% - 50% off their games depend on the publisher contract so realistically it would be more like

Retail (if the devs. make 50% of the games profit)
500,000 copies sold = break even on a AAA budget ($10 million)
50,000 copies sold = break even on a port ($1 million)

Digital
360,000 copies sold = break even on a AAA budget ($10 million)
36,000 copies sold = break even on a port ($1 million)

And since we don't know how many digital copies of games are sold we can't say what games have broke even, but my guess is most developers are doing just fine when you add the two.

[Death]

Not all developers can self publish. The publisher is the one that fronts development costs. Even with digital distribution, publishers exist. Retailers are replaced with distribution fees by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Even if you remove the retailer from the equation, you don't reduce your target sales by half. At best maybe 10-15% as long as SRP doesn't change.

[dcj0524]

People buy the VITA to play games so that makes since.

[asiatico]

I'm startting to want a vita more and more.. I just need a couple more games for me to jump in.. There's just so much coming out. Got a 3ds for all the games and pokemon coming out.. More ps3 games like gta5, Next Gen right around the corner, too much traffic lol

[AceofStaves]

I was that way with 3DS. I wanted one, but I couldn't pull the trigger until 'SMT IV' and 'Animal Crossing: New Leaf' came out.

[Kirnisorey]

I love my little indie machine. I use it to play games that I would other wise never buy and it suits its use just fine.

[piffdabiff]

Vita is a great device. People should really give it a try. Only negative aspect of it is the expensive memory cards.

[strigoi814]

less developers are dodging psvita, with over a million fan base already that bought the vita if you made a gem game you will be the best seller..vita gamers are much hype to play games and will buy anything they liked

[GdaTyler]

Vita has over 5-6 million install base. It's trying at least. Wish more people supported it... :(

[Rockets12]

The problem I have with indie games is that most of them are only PSN games. I like to buy physical copies of the games so I can have the box and to save on memory cards. If I buy all the indie games that I would love to play, I would need to buy some memory cards which are quite expensive (even after the drop-although it's a lot better)

[Misaka_x_Touma]

In Japan that is

[tubers]

Pure Chess and Men's Room Mayhem? LMAO

Well, with the Sony tax I guess devs/Sony makes some money.

Fruit Ninja 5 bucks/PvZ at least 10 bucks :P