Subtract advertising, Activision's cut, retailers' cut, Sony and Microsoft's cut. That first $500 million surely went right back into Activision's pocket for the investment. We can also assume that cost of developing Vanilla Destiny was over the span of 3-5 years. Remember, they scrapped most of what they had to begin with. Then with the new dedicated servers, they would have to expand. There isn't likely room in that little Bellvue, WA building for another server room, so that is a lease or building of another location in a business district.