badbad_leroybrown
CAG Veteran
I was thinking this as I was playing Yakuza 2 this afternoon angry that it didn't get the sales numbers it deserved. However it did to big numbers in Japan so the game obviously made Sega a decent chunk of change. I'm not exactly versed in the ways of how a game is actually brought stateside, but all things considering, I can't see any reason why Sega didn't at least make a tiny bit of money bringing Yakuza to the states. Granted the following numbers are all guesstimations on my part and could be completly wrong, but let's just do this for fun, and if any of you have any input that might be more accurate then what I post here, then by all means prove me wrong. I just wanna know the truth.
According to VGChartz (I know it isn't exactly accurate, but let's just use it as an example), the game sold around 40,000 in America. Those games were sold for $30 a peice, and Sega sold those to the retailers for I'm guessing around $24. 24X40,000=960,000, so let's just say that Sega got about $1,000,000 return on their investment.
So let's consider the factors that it would take to get this game localized. Yakuza 2 has no English voicework, so no actors are needed to be paid unless some of the Japanese cast is due some kind of royalty. The game was translated into English probably in house, so that didn't cost them much. Also, I can't remember seeing one single advertisement for the game anywhere. Not in a magazine, not on any websites, and certainly not on TV. The games official website hasn't been updated since July and doesn't look like it cost too much to create and maintain. The game probably had an american producer, but no advertizing guru or PR man was needed. Mass producing the cases, black & white booklet, and disc probably cost around $0.50 per game. They probably had realistic expectations for the game, so I'm guessing this isn't a ET situation and they don't have millions of copies sitting in a warehouse somewhere. The only other factor I can think of is the rating, and I recall hearing on a episode of Retronauts that it costs about $10,000 to get a game rated by the ESRB, so that's pretty miniscule
So those are the expenses I can think of as to getting the game localized and put on store shelves, and maybe I'm just naive, but I don't see how that could cost more then $1,000,000. So if my numbers are right, this "commercial failure" was probably far from it. Besides, a tiny profit is still a profit, right?
According to VGChartz (I know it isn't exactly accurate, but let's just use it as an example), the game sold around 40,000 in America. Those games were sold for $30 a peice, and Sega sold those to the retailers for I'm guessing around $24. 24X40,000=960,000, so let's just say that Sega got about $1,000,000 return on their investment.
So let's consider the factors that it would take to get this game localized. Yakuza 2 has no English voicework, so no actors are needed to be paid unless some of the Japanese cast is due some kind of royalty. The game was translated into English probably in house, so that didn't cost them much. Also, I can't remember seeing one single advertisement for the game anywhere. Not in a magazine, not on any websites, and certainly not on TV. The games official website hasn't been updated since July and doesn't look like it cost too much to create and maintain. The game probably had an american producer, but no advertizing guru or PR man was needed. Mass producing the cases, black & white booklet, and disc probably cost around $0.50 per game. They probably had realistic expectations for the game, so I'm guessing this isn't a ET situation and they don't have millions of copies sitting in a warehouse somewhere. The only other factor I can think of is the rating, and I recall hearing on a episode of Retronauts that it costs about $10,000 to get a game rated by the ESRB, so that's pretty miniscule
So those are the expenses I can think of as to getting the game localized and put on store shelves, and maybe I'm just naive, but I don't see how that could cost more then $1,000,000. So if my numbers are right, this "commercial failure" was probably far from it. Besides, a tiny profit is still a profit, right?
