First a AAA game on PC should cost well above $10M. ....
The bottom line here is that a for a ship-once AAA PC game, a 2M unit seller is marginally profitable.
In terms of real money makers, the best example of a "strategy" game that is doing huge numbers is League of Legends. LoL doesn't sell anything upfront, rather its all done through item sales. LoL (which is owned by Tencent) is doing an estimated $300-400M of revenue PER YEAR. Not one time, but each year and growing. The F2P item model can sustain itself much much longer than a ship once client sale. That's why Relic also wants to add some microtransaction elements to COH2.
Makes sense, as far as number averages go, but thats not the case on an industry wide level. If you account for EA, Activision and Ubisoft, the three Giants (THQ once the third one), then yes. However, many AAA games, from minor publishers or self published, can and are made at about $12 million. Psychonauts and Allods Online are such cases (
Example article, however they still have proved hard to earn their bucks, thats true)
From a publisher's point of view, yes marketing costs are important,because they have to pay for them, but we are concerned on the effect it would have on the development of CoH. However, with online retailers, the publisher's importance has diminished, to the point that games such as Minecraft have slapped the industry giants into reconsidering their business models. Marketing is very important, but it is not THE only factor. I once read this article on a magazine stating that about 60% of the money spent of marketing, is wasted/ineffective.
Which brings us to F2P. IMHO, it wont last logner than 5 years as a standard. Its a trend, and I say this because, while its always been around, and it has always been mildly successful (to very), it has only become popular in recent years, as a response to the World of Warcraft Massacre (thats what I call the MMO craze of 2004-onward). Since WoW, every other single MMO became redundant. All of a sudden, industry wide, suscription models became the BEST way to earn money and everyone wanted a piece of that cake. Then everyone realized their WoW wannabies sucked, and nobody played them. Then WoW started to become "dull" to the general public and suscriptions were not that popular anymore.
Enter F2P. I give you a game like WoW, but you don't have to pay me (for now). LoL is not the best example, because it is an exception, just like WoW was back then. It is a very shining example, of a game done right. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is an other example. The other Call of Duties simply rode on the success of the first.
The only REAL REASON why games are costing so much, while giving out so little, is because of 3D graphics. Ever since the times of PS1/N64 era (around 97) game costs began rocketing because they were taking technologies that were hard to develop: animation, lighting, texturing, rigging, rendering optimization. So many new specialties were needed, that you ended up having twice the amount of people working on them, with very few exception.
If EA or Activision were to develop a AAA 2D flagship game, and they invested $150 million dollars and gave the developers the 2-3 year REAL devlopment time they should, it would probably bomb in sales... but it would the finest 2D game ever released in the history of humanity. It would grab Nokia's snake, and wrap it around Chess and Solitaire. It would fuck Minesweeper up.
But alas, since 3D came, everyone WANTS graphics, and now you need 10 tech guys working their asses off, so that the textures fit the memory limit, and bashing the level designer because he placed too many props in the ground. Development time just triple, while deadlines just halved.
RANT MODE: OFF.