“Moderately budgeted” compared to what? Modern AAA game budgets have absolutely exploded and are not sustainable, turning game dev cycles into 5+ year marathons and giving it Hollywood Syndrome where every game needs to be a blockbuster to be considered a success and no risks are able to be taken because of the massive investment each project requires. Do you think that’s sustainable? Or do you think that perhaps things have gone out of control when a $90 price point is being floated, even in conjunction with money printing anti-consumer features like lootboxes?
Let’s say that including benefits, a developer’s salary is about $100k. Maybe a small team of 8 people worked on a game like The Thaumaturge for 3 years. Before you even factor in contract work like voice acting, that would put the development budget at $2.4M. If the game cost $20, they’d have to sell about 120k copies to break even on that investment, which is far from guaranteed. By pricing the game at $35, their break even point is nearly half of that. This is a moderately budgeted game, not a AAA game with microtransactions.
Even an experienced team like Mimimi games, who made smart development choices by iterating on what they built before to keep costs down, releasing critical successes several times in a row, ended up closing down because the money coming in was too tight. Their games ranged from $30-$50 and had every sale, bundle, giveaway, and promotional opportunity you could think of.
