>>37038
>but Spider-man 2 sold 2 million units on release
Anon, did you forget about the leaks over the summer detailing how Sony wasted at least
$200 MILLION on each of their individual games:
https://archive.ph/G9e3W
That's just regarding the budget for developing the damn things. It's not accounting for marketing and PR, which would double that number at minumum. In addition, you also have to factor in retail and shipping costs as well. Which would result in the actual total cost being somewhere as high as $600-$800 million.
ALSO, this is all assuming that inflation doesn't occur. Even in the healthiest economies on the planet, inflation is an ever present fact of life, that increases 3%-5% every year. Meaning that, Sony need to make the quickest return on investment as possible because total money made in the short term is worth more than the same "amount" of money made in the long term. But, trying to be the most liberal with the numbers, for the purposes of giving Sony as much leverage and advantage as possible, let's just assume that the actual number they need to make back is $300 million, within six month's time, just to break even on the project (
IOW, all their debts are paid, but there's practically no money in the bank afterwards). Assuming each person bought the game at full price Sony would need to sell at least
5 million copies of the game
over six months.
Did they make this deadline with the two games where we have a confirmed budget number for?
Let's first look at Horizon. It was finally confirmed in April, over a year after release, that the game sold 8.4 million copies:
https://archive.ph/z2ha3
Assuming that the game sold at the same pace over that 14 month period, that means that the game only sold 3.6 million by the six month deadline. But, that's a highly inaccurate way to calculate it. What else do we have? Well, in August of 2022, which
is the end of the six month window, we have a report stating that 50% of all PS5 sales were the result of bundles with
Horizon:
https://archive.ph/Gxrnn
Assuming this to be true, worldwide, let's look at the sales of the PS5 from February to August of 2022. As of January of 2022, the number is assumed to be 15-17 million:
https://archive.ph/PEqSm
And, by August, that number rose to 21 million:
https://archive.ph/i9Gf8
Assuming that numbers are accurate and being the most generous, that means that 6 million PS5s were sold over those six months, with 3 million accounting for sales of
Horizon. Well, what about non-PS5 bundle sales? We don't need to worry about the PS4 as it only accounted for 5% of sales:
https://archive.ph/pnSRc
So, how about standalone PS5 copies of the game? Well, apparently, that accounted for 80% of the games sales:
https://archive.ph/DnGSc
So, with that piece of info, that means that, over a six month period,
over 15 million copies of Horizon: Forbidden West was sold. I don't know about anyone else, but that seems a little off to me. Oh well, regardless, I guess that means Horizon'' did in fact make it's money back. Congratulations Sony, though I do question why you lied and said that it sold only half as much as it really did.
Let's move onto TLoU2. There's only two types of data that I can find concerning the game's sales. The first is the amazing announcement of having sold four million copies within the first week:
https://archive.ph/yaoid
The second is this Ledditor breaking down the game's performance over a seven monther period, where he outlines the game's player stats, and ultimately comes to the conclusion that
TLoU2 barely attracted any additional sales after it's first month:
https://archive.ph/kfwFa
But, regardless, it does show that Sony managed to pass the 5 million mark that I generously gave them. So, again, congratualtions are in order for Sony.
Thank God they didn't need to sell MORE than that five million number, right?