Does anyone know how much money Beth has made off Skyriim?

Since we don't know their costs of development and marketing, then any answer is a SWAG*





*Silly Wild Ass Guess

Well how much money was brought in ignoring production

A lot... They sold 7 million units in a single week. And they've sold much more since then. It's too early to say how much they profited from it as the game is still selling fairly well

Have to wait till they file for accurate numbers in terms of revenue generated. Until then its just guesswork

AFAIK, the only info we have available to us us total sales. About a week before Christmas, various news outlets reported total worldwide sales of about $650 Million. It probably increased to some extent since then. I suspect we'll get more updates on their sales sometime this month or next, but I would expect that now Christmas has passed, sales will likely slow a lot.

As CCNA said, we don't have enough info to really understand what their actual *profit* is, but it has to be something pretty nice. So, here's my attempt at a SWAG: First, I think most retailers typically take about 50% of the price of a new release; I don't really know how much Valve takes for Steam, but let's assume they also take 50% as a conservative guess. So, probably Zenimax has taken in about $325Million. I don't think anyone spends more than $100 Million on development of a video game, so lets take that as "ceiling" on dev costs. I don't really know how much they spent on Marketing, support, etc, so let's guess $100 Million (which I suspect is probably much higher than what they actually spent on marketing, support, and other costs). So, maybe somewhere in the ballpark of $125-$150 Million (before taxes; so maybe around $100 Million after taxes).

Again, definitely a SWAG, but at least not completely implausible.

I'll tell you why it matters. It's either enough to pay the wages for Skyrim dlc and Fallout 4, or it isn't.

I pretty much just wanted to know and i also was wondering if the profits were sufficient to perhaps start a new TES now so we could have it sooner. (obviously in the background of Fallout 4)

I answered your original question above. Be at peace my child.

Ty for answering. In my limited knowledge, most of the money used to make a video game comes from investors. They proceeds of a game go toward paying that games investors back. The more money a game makes, the surer bet investing in that company is. So the next TES game would get more money from investors who are eager to see a return. I'm sure a good portion goes toward DLC etc but still no solid figures are available. Every number out now is inflated to make them look better to stockholders etc

OK, enough with the bickering. Either you want to answer the question, or you don't. If you don't want to answer it, then post in another thread that you do want to answer.

Yes, I deleted 9 posts from this thread in case you were wondering where the bickering is that I am talking about.

we won't know that answer until the appropriate info becomes available at a future date

I really hope the profits are huge. None of it will see its way to my pocket, but I like to see excellent work rewarded.

And I hope it encourages Bethesda and its competitors to make more of the beautiful RPG sandbox games like Fallout and Vegas.

If the deleted posts weren't answering the question, then they were off-topic [just as this post is].

If the post is off-topic, it is spam.

Spam gets deleted. Especially when reported.

If you are seeing so many spoiler violation/problems, use the report button and report them. Then the mods can do something about them.

Strange how that works.

Me too!

awe

the way you say it is like you think they throw money away for fun.
no way they would throw away 100 million for advertisemant, without being sure of the income

you do realize their profits broke record, they never expected such a stagering succes.

so no, it didnt cost 100 million in advertisemant, probably not a 10th of it,
and I doubt production, including voice acting, was beyond 100 million
my estimates are 50 million for overall production (mostly salaries)
another 50 million $ for voice acting, motion capture and those sorts of unusal things that tend to go over budget
as for advertising, it s not worth mentioning and absorbed by the two above

I mean seriuously in manufacturing you are lucky if you make a 20% profit
if you had to throw a 100% marketing budget each time you try selling a spoon
... all corporations would go bankrupt

now for things like steam, the normal cut for online stuff is 30%. any more than that would warrant a lawsuit
you see, there are laws governing those things. steam costs are non existant.
every download is a sale. there is no manufacturing. just running costs, like servers for mmoo games,
which isnt that much if you keep selling stuff daily with your steam server, which they do

I mean, things like youtube manage to stay afloat from just advertisemant
so that give you an hint


that s a dumb comment

it s the investors who pocket that money, not the workers

what I hope is that bethesda use a large portion of that to give some bonus to those hard working peoples at bethesda

like others have said, i hope it does really well because i want more games like beth games. i will be the first to point out flaws and criticize, but there is no other dev out there doing what beth does. for that i am grateful. judging on some of the numbers that have been reported, my highly informed guess is A LOT lol. but without knowing the salaries of the dev team, the building overhead, paying people like custodians and security, etc., how many ads were bought and the cost of those ads, we the general public really have no idea.

Well my Silly Wild Ass Guess is

12,500,000 (7,00,000 in 48 hours + extra sales since and Steam sales) units sold x an Average retail price of say (in english money ￡39.99) = ￡499,875,000 - The production costs which were mentioned to be estimated at 100,000,000 by Imbd

so I'm saying profit by my unscientific estimations to be ￡399,875,000 ($625,432,654)

I would guess that modding will cause a minor spike in sales... not significant...but that the decline of those sales will be slow, eventually steadying out around a reliable number that will continue on until the next installment comes out.

As I said in my parenthetical, I believe the $100 Million to be most probably a large *overestimate*. I'm being very, very conservative in my SWAG. I agree that the number is probably really much smaller, maybe $5-10Million. Also, that figure wasn't just for advertising, but for all other costs - advertising, additional technical support staff, the additional accounts they'll need to hire to count all those bags of cash showing up on their doorstep (*cough*) and figure out how to convince the IRS that they actually lost money on Skyrim instead of making a profit and so don't need to pay taxes (*coughcoughcough*). *grin*


But software is not manufacturing. You're right that a manufacturer of commodities like silverware couldn't ever afford to have such a high level of spending on marketing. It's quite possible that, perhaps, someone making a blockbuster video game or movie, who spent $100 Million, very well might spend $50-100 Million on marketing to try to guarantee a certain level of sales, especially when the marginal cost of a copy of the game is like 2.5 cents.

But, as I said above, I suspect you're right, that it isn't that much, but it could potentially work in the software business model.


Well, the workers get to keep their jobs, and very likely many of them may be able to negotiate decent raises from Bethesda, or go work for other companies at a higher salary, based upon their involvement in such a massively successful title. It's also possible that some of those employees either have stock, or stock options, in the company, and will directly benefit from the success (some employees might have some Zenimax stock in their IRA or 401k, while others may get stock or options as part of their compensation pacakge).

I'm not saying *every single* employee will see a lot of benefit from gamesas's success, but like I said, at least most of them probably have pretty secure employement for the foreseeable future with an employer whose strong financial position means it isn't likely to be doing massive layoffs soon (well, honestly, it probably will layoff some employees who were basically hired on during the release, like additional support or testing staff, and who the company will not need so many of in 3 to 6 months when they've finished releasing DLC and have gone back into development on future titles).

By the way, guys,


http://fanaticmodz.com/Thread-Skyrim-Ships-10-Million-Copies

*********
According to Bethesda, the game has brought in over $650 million dollars in sales since its release on November 11

Steam sales figures are a closely guarded secret, and never factor into the NPD charts, but we have a little bit of a window into that world today. “Skyrim is the fastest selling title in Steam's history,” says Valve Director of Business Development Jason Holtman.
*********

you heard right, steam isn t even included in that number !!!

I don t think they ll go bankrupt anytime soon.


Anyone with some business experience can estimate their costs
The only part really in the mist is voice acting, but you can use rational judgement for that one
knowing the voice acting isn t the main selling point, how much % would you add to the budget.
same argument goes for marketing.

So this makes me certain that the cost are between 50 M and 100 M
(50M estimated by worker cost 100 peoples x 5 years x 100K per year, which is generous)
(equipment and building cost are totaly dwarfed by salaries)
(unless you are building a space shuttle, a nuclear reactor, or something of that sort.....
for ordinary software development, salaries are the core expense)

now, I could be wrong on my conservative approach, which is why I let it run wildly by 100% to cover all the rest
this gives the 100 million estimate

the question remaining is what is that 650 million number, and what is the income from the valve side
also I m not sure what are the profit margin on console

if they sold over 10 million copes, I suppose that s the amount made at the retail point,
not the direct profit made by bethesda (as some article mistakingly implied)
so between the retailer and the distributor, bethesda could loose 50-80% of that amount

for steam, if it s like impulse, bethesda probably make 70%
but steam is popular, so maybe they are more greedy

whatever the case, the wost case is a profit of 130 million, not counting steam
I doubt the real numbers are that low
to that number you need to substract 50-100 million depending what their budget was.
I tend to be conservative on that, doubt they throw money to the wind

(First, I think most retailers typically take about 50% of the price of a new release)
This could be driven down by the market, because of the emergeance of things like steam
I don t think retailers want to disapear from the map
On the other hand, there is also a cut for the distributor, another 50 %
So if the final price is 60$, the retailer paid 30$ to the distributor who paid 15$ to bethesda
10,000,000 copies x 15 = 150 million easilly


Now, I m not sure if those sales figure were worldwide or just the us

What is certain is at this point they most likely made a profit of over 50 million from a 50-100 million investment
That s a 50% to 200% return on investment, over 5 years. still good. it s like 10%-40% interest rate

What ccna said about not knowind the advertisemant and voice acting cost is partialy true
but game developers are not madmen.

like someone said, you will put a ceiling based on what happen in the business,
and what sales you are expecting. you don t shoot yourself in the foot on purpose,

the other thing is, for something like a game, you put your money where it sell.
dragon age 2 was highly criticize for putting too much on voice acting and too litle where it mattered
It s cute for the cutscenes, but peoples aint buying a movie, they re buying a game

you can assume they will not go beyond doubling the cost from the salaries.
this is software, not a space shuttle

In any case, since that 650 million isn t profit, but retail sales figure, they didnt get as ridiculously rich as I initialy thought
(that would have been 1000% return on invesment, the equivalent of a 200% interest rate!!!)

I still hope they give good bonus to those hard working developers

If they have great accountants $1.25

One hundred and eeeeeeeiiiiiighty.