look, MS didnt get to be the biggest monopoly on the planet by losing money.
what i meant to say, anyway, was that manufactuing and development were two different parts of game costs. skate was treating them like they were the same thing.
and you are entirely contradictory to yourself...you say i did not mention development but provide a quote proving that i did mention it?
"Paying 10 programmers, 10 artists, and several admin staff salaries"
okay, lets go to an extreme, and say each one of these guys is making the top salary of $150,000 a year, which they are obviously not. average starting salary for a programmer, i know is 30k. but lets say these guys have all been working for a long time, and are ALL getting $150,000 a year. this would never happen in real life, thats ridiculous, but here it is:
150k x 25 x 3 x = 45 million dollars
salary x people x years
(i used 5 as a figure for the admin staff. i think thats about average.)
now that is a big investment, but consider the fact that they are almost making a $49 profit on each game they sell. by the time economy of scale figures into it, they are making each game at barely over $1, rough estimate. if anyone can find the actual number, please tell me. anywho...xbox has a number of platinum titles, which means they sold over 1 million copies (correct me if im wrong on that). when they get platinum status, they drop to $20. but before, they were all selling at $50.
so profit of one game - 49x1,000,000 = 49 million
so platinum seller is enough to offset the cost of paying a development team, with each person getting $150k per year.
so they are more then offsetting the cost of development, as you can see.
hope that clears things up.