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Data in the Haystack (March 2007)

Hi Tom,

How ya doin'. I'm doing a project for a class at college. I'm trying to find some data. For each of the following game franchises:

  • The Sims
  • Final Fantasy
  • Madden NFL
  • Grand Theft Auto
  • Donkey Kong
  • The Legend of Zelda
  • Gran Turismo
  • Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Lineage
  • Dragon Quest

I just need to know:

  1. Number of units sold
  2. Cost of development
  3. Sell-in vs. sell-through
  4. Profit for the publisher
  5. Profit for the developer (if not developed by publisher)
  6. Profitability norm for the retailer

I'm looking for a reliable source, preferably an industry average that differentiates PC versus console versus online versus handheld versus mobile for each of the past 10 years.

I've been researching this for like a couple days now, and have yet to find reliable numbers. Any ideas on where to look? Surely there is a source out there that gives accurate industry figures covering the past 10 years. I just need rough estimates, actually. So I hear that, like, 30 years ago a game could be made for twenty thou, but now it costs 20 mil, at least that's what CNN says.

Surely SOMEBODY must have compiled all that info in one convenient easy-to-find place. Just that it's been hard for me to find, for some reason I can't quite figure out. If I could just find one convenient handy source with all the info I need in it, it'd be real easy to just whip out the report for my class project.

I gotta have this to ace my university studies, and I'm coming up empty. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help. Help!

Data Guy

Hello Data,

Ahem. I have some bad news for you, young Grasshopper.

Either you've chosen an impossible topic for your school project, or your professor has set you on an impossible wild goose chase.

Market information is available, to some extent, but it normally costs thousands of dollars, and typically doesn't cover the precise kind of detail you are seeking.

The way the rest of us in the biz get detailed statistics (when we don't buy them from researchandmarkets.com or marketresearch.com or abiresearch.com or other marketing data companies like that) is to scour postmortems and news articles on games, compiling a needle from this haystack and a needle from that haystack until we've gotten all the needles we could find.

Check everything in Gamasutra, check everything in Game Developer back issues. And check back issues of GamaDaily, GameBizDaily, and FierceGameBiz - use Google to find those.

If at all possible, I recommend you try to change the topic of your project. You might need to show this column to your teacher, if he doesn't want to let you change your project. Nothing is ever as easy as we might wish, young Jedi. (Um, wait, I mean, "Grasshopper.")

You say "surely somebody must have compiled the information" - here's an idea - how about YOU be the one to do that! Good luck with your difficult project. Glad it's not me writing it!

 

 

Tom's Bio

Tom Sloper's game biz career began over twenty years ago at Western Technologies, where he designed LCD games and the Vectrex games "Spike" and "Bedlam". There followed stints at Sega Enterprises, Rudell Design, Atari Corporation, and Activision. In 12 years at Activision, Tom produced 36 unique game titles (plus innumerable ports and localizations), designed four games, and won five awards. Tom worked for several months in Activision's Japan operation, in Tokyo. He is perhaps best known for designing, managing and producing Activision's "Shanghai" line. He is currently consulting, writing, speaking, teaching, and developing original games. Find out more at Sloperama.

© 2006 Tom Sloper. All rights reserved.