Quantic Dream’s Guillaume de Fondaumiere recently held a keynote speech at Digital Dragons and spoke about how games can push boundaries, be culturally relevant and still make a profit. He cites Heavy Rain as an example.
“These projects have been and are profitable, to some extent. I’ll give you one example that I know about: Heavy Rain. Let’s say it’s $22 million to produce. With marketing it’s maybe $30 million.
“With distribution, $40 million. Sony earned $100 million with the game, so it’s very profitable. It’s the sort of margin that most publishers would strive for, for any game.
“Heavy Rain was the ninth best selling game in the year it was released, so we made the top ten. It’s true of Journey, too. I don’t know the details of the budget, but I know from speaking to members of ThatGameCompany that it was a profitable game for them and for Sony.
“We should stop thinking that innovation rhymes with unprofitable.”
Quantic Dream is currently working on Beyond: Two Souls, set to release on PS3 and PS4 this year.
Source: GIBiz
