I really enjoyed H5G. The multiplayer is arguably the best out of any game in franchise history. But after the Master Chief Collection, and the complaints with H5G’s campaign, I’m beginning to worry about what the future has in store for this great franchise. 343 Industries is a fully owned subsidiary of Microsoft. Microsoft is a blue chip fortune fifty company who has a board of directors who demand profitability and high yield dividends each and every year. With that being said, lets look at some numbers from Halo 4 and Halo 5 (the following figures are not verified by MS/343i) I
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The production costs for Halo 4. $40 million dollars. (source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/4976568 - Halo 4 shipped ten million copies for a sales revenue of $600 Million Dollars… - That’s a net profit of more than HALF A BILLION DOLLARS
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The production costs for Halo 5 are estimated to be around $250 million (I believe this to be a conservative estimate) - H5G has shipped approximately 3.8 million copies at $60/unit that’s a sales revenue of $228 million… - **That’s a net loss of 22 million dollars on Halo 5 Guardians.**If you factor in what happened with the Master Chief Collection, I am concerned that MS is taking a hard look at 343 Industries and figuring out what has to happen in order to return this franchise to profitability before green-lighting any work on Halo 6.
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Please comment if you would like.
$250 million in production cost for Halo 5?
what they have spent that money? ah, I know … DEDICATED SERVERS
“I die laughing”
Even with all the marketing, i doubt microsoft spent 250 mill.
> 2533274860062662;3:
> Even with all the marketing, i doubt microsoft spent 250 mill.
I’ve read that 343i had a staff of 500 people during the development of H5G. Let’s use an average income $45,000 per employee. (conservative estimate). H5G had a 3+ year development cycle. That’s nearly $67 million in payroll for H5G. Factor in developmental costs, marketing… Production for Hunt the Truth and The Fall of Reach…
It’s a lot of money.
> 2533274840192351;2:
> $250 million in production cost for Halo 5?
> what they have spent that money? ah, I know … DEDICATED SERVERS
>
> “I die laughing”
Is assassinated by an teleporting player, then gets disconnected.
“Good work on those Dedicated Servers!”
Depending on where you’re getting your figures from, some places don’t or arent able to factor in digital copies. Which is an exponentially growing medium and counted for a lot of Halo 5 sales.
If Halo 4 profited over half a million and halo 5 was in the hole, as you claimed, you would be seeing a MASSIVE overhaul of the staff at 343 assuming there would even be a 343 Industries at all after a decline like that.
Gotta use common sense on this one, friend. No one would shrug off a decline that bad
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> (the following figures are not verified by MS/343i)
That’s putting it mildly.
In no way did they spend 250 mil developing Halo 5.
You can “estimate” all you want but your saying that Halo 5 cost half as much as Destiny supposedly did. That seems outrageously high.
> 2533274812650916;7:
> Depending on where you’re getting your figures from, some places don’t or arent able to factor in digital copies. Which is an exponentially growing medium and counted for a lot of Halo 5 sales.
>
> If Halo 4 profited over half a million and halo 5 was in the hole, as you claimed, you would be seeing a MASSIVE overhaul of the staff at 343 assuming there would even be a 343 Industries at all after a decline like that.
>
> Gotta use common sense on this one, friend. No one would shrug off a decline that bad
And that’s after the supposed/alleged/randomly tossed out 625% increase in development cost…
You’re not even factoring the req packs people buy. I’ve spent some money stock piling up useful reqs. They’re making money.
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> > 2533274812650916;7:
> > Depending on where you’re getting your figures from, some places don’t or arent able to factor in digital copies. Which is an exponentially growing medium and counted for a lot of Halo 5 sales.
> >
> > If Halo 4 profited over half a million and halo 5 was in the hole, as you claimed, you would be seeing a MASSIVE overhaul of the staff at 343 assuming there would even be a 343 Industries at all after a decline like that.
> >
> > Gotta use common sense on this one, friend. No one would shrug off a decline that bad
>
>
> And that’s after the supposed/alleged/randomly tossed out 625% increase in development cost…
True lol.
Wasn’t the Halo 5 launch the highest in terms of money generated, because of the special Halo 5 Xbox One bundles they sold? I remember it being over $400 million.
Where are you getting your numbers from?
I personally buy all my games digital now, because I don’t like having to -Yoink- with disks.
> 2535412280615383;5:
> > 2533274860062662;3:
> > Even with all the marketing, i doubt microsoft spent 250 mill.
>
>
> I’ve read that 343i had a staff of 500 people during the development of H5G. Let’s use an average income $45,000 per employee. (conservative estimate). H5G had a 3+ year development cycle. That’s nearly $67 million in payroll for H5G. Factor in developmental costs, marketing… Production for Hunt the Truth and The Fall of Reach…
>
> It’s a lot of money.
That’s assuming everyone in the studio worked on H5 for the entirety of three years. That’s assuming they maintained that staff load for the entirety of the development. That’s assuming everyone they had “on staff” were full time employees.
That’s a lot of assumptions that make me doubt you’ve ever taken a look at a real budget.
Lets just assume they have tons of money and will never go out of business because people are stupid and buy things all the time.
this seems like a problem
> 2533274812650916;7:
> Depending on where you’re getting your figures from, some places don’t or arent able to factor in digital copies. Which is an exponentially growing medium and counted for a lot of Halo 5 sales.
>
> If Halo 4 profited over half a million and halo 5 was in the hole, as you claimed, you would be seeing a MASSIVE overhaul of the staff at 343 assuming there would even be a 343 Industries at all after a decline like that.
>
> Gotta use common sense on this one, friend. No one would shrug off a decline that bad
and the truth shall set u free.
Yeah, especially that 343i said they have Halo planned for next 10 years.
I think OP was just trying to show that it’s expensive to produce these games, as you can see by what matador posted above. I think the fact is, 343 is turning a profit within MS guidelines or MS would get another developer. For example if they weren’t profitable we wouldn’t see them paying out millions of dollars in prizes to the winners of the pro championship games. These events, I would guess get taken out of their marketing budget.
It would be nice to see them drop more money into the server issues that are constantly screwing up the gaming experience for everyone.
Just my thoughts…
We cannot accurately assume what the sales figures are.
+MS will not release the real sales figures but that doesn’t mean it sold badly, MS doesn’t release these figures often, and when they do it’s to tout how awesome their hardware is. They already lost this generations console war so there is no way they are going to change peoples minds now.
+We have no figures on how many digital copies were sold which cost just as much as physical copies.
+H5 has lowest sales in physical copies compared to past games in the franchise, but xbox bundles contain digital copies of said game. The previous halo titles did not have digital copies upon release (for the most part), and if they did digital sales were not the monster they are today.
+We do not know how much cash has been made through the REQ system, and likely never will.
- We do know that for the first HCWS, MS put in $1 million, and another $1.5 million was included through REQ sales at that point in time.
++ There is no way of knowing if MS/343 kept any other monetary gains through the REQ system prior to HCWS, but we do know that they retain ALL monetary gains after the HCWS.