Namco must sell 500,000 PS3 games to make profit

Japanese publisher reveals break-even figures

Namco Bandai must sell over 500,000 units of its PS3 titles before it begins to make a profit, according to president Takeo Takasu.

The price of graphics alone costs the second-largest Japanese publisher one billion yen (EUR 6.5 million), more than double that of titles for Nintendo's Wii, according to a report by Bloomberg.

"We have to sell at least 500,000 copies per title worldwide to make a profit on PlayStation 3 games," said Takasu.

Namco Bandai released Ridge Racer 7 and Mobile Suit Gundam for the PlayStation 3, both of which were the highest-selling games on the weekend of release, shifting around 22,000 units each.

Gamesindustry.biz

Wow - this could be an interesting problem. Now, unless your game is going to sell a million copies, it isn't financially worth it.

Is this true for both the 360 and the PS3, or just the PS3? Granted, these costs will come down over time as what you learn from Game A can be used in Game B - but this is still a huge initial investment.

I think it only effects the psp as if it was the same on 360 namco would have said something when it developed RR6, but obviously as the hardware gets better the need for more experienced programers grows and the time taken to produce the games becomes longer, this could be very worrying in the short term, but also means that less crappy games will get released theoretically.