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Edited by CitrusTheNile:
4/27/2016 5:01:08 PM
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Objective Estimates of Bungie Profits and How they are Heavily Favoring Year 2 Players
I was inspired by MerkMusic to estimate how much money Bungie has made off of Destiny. Here is what I came up with based on [url=http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/?name=Destiny]vgchartz.com:[/url]
[b]Vanilla Destiny Total Units Sold: 12.44 million
Dollars Earned at 60 dollars/game: 746.4 million
If All players bought CE and PoE: 497.6 million
If Half of Year 1 players mouth CE and PoE: 248.8 million
Total Earnings off Vanilla Destiny: 995.2 million to 1.24 billion
TTK Total Units Sold: 3.35 million units
Dollars earned at 40 dollars/game: 134 million
Dollars earned at 5 dollars/silver addition (based on number of TTK units): 16.75 million
Dollars earned at 50 dollars/silver addition (based on number of TTK units): 167.5 million
TOTAL OVERALL: 1.129 billion to 1.378 billion (not including silver purchases)[/b]
These are rough estimates and low balling considering the conversion fiasco when selling Destiny and TTK in other countries (Australia I am, sorry).
Bungie gives the community the illusion that they are working diligently on Destiny 2 and that they have a skeleton crew still working on Destiny 1. Where has all of this money gone? Why can't you expand and hire more people to work on Destiny? Why has the game turned to shit when you have plenty of basic resources at your disposal? Why hasn't Bungie fixed their terrible game engine so they don't have to spend 8 hours moving a rock three feet?
The last point is that they are catering to Year 2 players and have completely forgot their Year 1 veterans who netted them almost 10 times the amount of revenue. There is absolutely no reason why Bungie should be catering this game to new players considering the overwhelming majority were Year 1 players considering 4 times as many units were sold in Year 1.
What Bungie is doing is unacceptable, and I hope I have shed some light on the Desticles.
EDIT: The ignorant responses to this post have missed the point entirely. I do not have access to anything that is mentioned in the comments and I am calculating a MINIMUM amount of money Bungie made off of Destiny.
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2 RepliesHere's some fascinating real world limitations on those earnings estimates: 1. The publisher, retailer, and console manufacturer takes a cut of sales. Bungie probably doesn't get 1/2 that money. Also, the initial sales were soft for a Bungie game, and a good portion of sales were at a discount. 2. Most players don't buy DLC. Only about 1/4 of players bought The Taken King, and that's probably the same percent that bought the Year 1 DLC. Lack of DLC sales is the reason Bungie dropped their DLC plans for Year 2. 3. There are "whales" buying silver, but for every whale there are 10 frugal players like me who never buy into micro-transactions. The quality and quantity of Year 2 content shows how little Bungie is making off silver. 4. Destiny is an expensive game to make. Bungie has hundreds of employees they need pay . Then there's the cost of equipment, facilities, voice talent, testing, marketing, etc. The delay to Destiny and Destiny 2 means Bungie has to recoup more years of investment without more income. 5. Destiny 2 should be a more expensive game than Destiny because Bungie can't afford another 7/10 game. Destiny 2 needs to be bigger than Destiny in the way The Taken King was bigger than The Dark Below. Destiny 2 also badly needs dedicated servers for competitive multiplayer. Bungie seems to agree, as they are focusing more on Destiny 2 than DLC for Destiny. In summary, Destiny is a blockbuster like Batman v. Superman is a blockbuster. Destiny generated a ton of revenue but not a corresponding ton of profit. Destiny was also a missed opportunity to make a better game that would have sold better.
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Edited by joeeeeeeeeee357: 4/28/2016 7:17:52 AMFirstly these estimates are ridiculous because it assumes everyone has bought all DLCs as well as silver. Also do you even know what profit means? You haven't even begun to consider any sort of cost. And lastly do you honestly think all that money goes to Bungie? They don't sell the game directly so the sellers probably take some of the money out of that, and they have taxes to pay as well as the money the publisher, Activision would take from the game. That's not even considering production costs. I'm not saying they don't make a shit ton of money off this but your estimates are way off.
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You're forgetting production cost, advertising, salaries, etc. and the fact that a huge percentage of TTK buyers were year one buyers. They're not mutually exclusive.
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2 Replies'Catering to year 2 players and forgetting year 1 players.' What are you talking about? Do year 1 players play a different destiny to year 2 players? Year 1 players downloaded ttk the same as anyone else who bought ttk? Stop trying to create a class system that doesn't exist. Also your analysis is flawed, you can't highlight revenue without considering G what they have spent. Games barely break even nowadays.
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Look at CEO's paychecks and bonuses compared to employees paychecks and bonuses. Then factor in the increase in share prices of both bungie and activision. Look at these numbers from the games initial announcement to now. Compare with the increase in both staff and management positions within that time frame and the increased cost in salary and bonuses over the same time period. Then, take those numbers and compare them tothe rough figures you've estimated and you should find the two pretty close. Doing that will give you a rough estimate of where all the money has gone.
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If you didn't have access to all of the expenses associated with running a business in America why would you act like your numbers of how much money they have left to spend are accurate? The business tax alone in America is one of the highest in the world. (Why do you think businesses export their taxes/labor to other countries)? Paying the salary for 500+ employees annually Paying for the health insurance for 500+ employees annually Paying for the business insurance for your company annually Paying for workspace/equipment for 500+ employees annually. Marketing budget for each DLC and future releases Paying the cuts to all other involved businesses (Microsoft, Activision,etc.) Development of destiny 2 (this costs Millions) Legal fees You act as if none of these expenses exist and then when we point them out you just assume that it isn't that expensive... The 30% business tax alone should just end your argument. The excuse that you didn't have access to the numbers would probably be the reason not to post this half-assed thought process.
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Now go back and estimate all of Bungies costs prior to release of destiny when they were building/programming the game and hadn't sold a copy yet. Then subtract that from your estimate. THEN estimate the costs for continued development post game release and further subtract that from your estimate. They are not sitting on a pile of a billion dollars from destiny.
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2 RepliesRetailers take 20%ish. Microsoft/Sony get a cut. Activision takes a large slice. Bungie maintains servers. Bungie has over 500 employees. Bungie has been working on Destiny for several years. Don't expect companies to break even on such huge investments. They are supposed to make money. I am well aware Bungie is probably holding back a little to make some extra profit. That's their business. I am extremely satisfied with the products they've delivered thus far. This isn't some subpar shit-tier game like Evolve or barebones game like Titanfall. As far as investing in Destiny 2 as opposed to the current game goes, what's wrong with that? They just delivered a free uodate for TTK owners. Any work they did on this game would be a paid expansion anyways. Using Silver sales, they threw together SRL, Crimson Doubles, and Halloween. Is there really a difference between creating a paid expansion or putting that content in Destiny 2?
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2 RepliesEdited by ProfDocStuv: 4/27/2016 3:19:13 PMLast I heard, bungie said they had about 500 bungie (not including activision) employees. The average game developers salary is about $80,060 per year. That means in the one year they spend $41,530,000 on just employee salaries. They also have to pay additional taxes on those salaries, like the 6.8% social security employer match salary. So that number is actually higher. Then they have to pay for the building lease, they have to give activision a huge cut, etc. Yeah they still made millions, but if you think there is just a billion dollars that they have all blown on beach houses and such lying around and that they aren't using it to fund the game, I think that is a little out of touch with reality. I'm not saying Bungie can't do better, or that I don't expect more from them in the future, but I just think your argument is a little unfair and unrealistic.
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They have too many employees to be honest. 500+ is over 3 times the amount of employees other AAA games have. Skyrim and Fallout 4 had just barely 100 people. "Soulsbourne" games have about 80-100. Assassin's Creed 4 had over 1,000 and look how bad that game was.
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2 RepliesEdited by Unicronic: 4/27/2016 3:02:40 PM500 employees working for at least 2 years, likely 4 years. They likely get additional pay for shipping the product. Activision get a cut. Sony and Microsoft get a cut. Probably combined at least 50% per platform. There ongoing development work for expansions and DLCs. They have to make a profit too to fund future plans.
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6 RepliesWow a 9th grade math wiz can put some numbers together but no concept of contracts, advertising, operating costs, etc etc etc ... Do the numbers talk to you ?
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