Massive Price Drop!

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Coldcall

If you are correct with that figure then that blows my mind, because 200,000 sales at $50 per sale is $10million. Ubisoft would have a great margin in that case and the fact they complain is unbeleivable. It also indicates the blatant profiteering they have engaged in by releasing these games early. There was clearly no need as the profit marguin was huge. They could have simply taken 2 more months to QA the game. At the rates you menntioned that would have cost them an extra few tens of thousands, nothing compared to the ROI.

I dont think its such an easy calculation. Most of Ubisoft's sales are to retailers who negotiate a price based on their network and the potential sales, so I would say a average sales price by Ubi between say $15-25 may make more sense. Perhaps more on the lower end, since some retailers seem to already be dumping their stocks. Since some retailers seem to be accepting returns with no hassle, I presume they also have a deal to get a refund from Ubi.

Sales of sh3 were around 200,000, sales of sh4 were around 100,000 total. If sales of SH5 are only as high as, say sh4, which seems a reasonable assumption. We have gross revenues of $1,500,000 to $2,500,000. From that you have to detect salary, marketing and other costs at Ubi corporate, so even if they only paid say 500k to Ubi Romania, we are still not talking about a huge profit.

When you look at it this way, it also shows why Ubi acts the way they do. The keep the development cost and time to a minimum to be certain to turn a profit.

Obviously if they had more sales, they could afford to spend more money on it.