Well, the majority of the cost of producing a new game is in the development.
A quick example (and keep in mind that I am being incredibly optimistic with these figures)...
If I wanted to produce a new KoF game, I would need...
Static graphics for menu screens, splash screens and logos, game backgrounds etc. For a good quality game, this would run to about 100 static images.
Sprite graphics for each character. Let's assume 20 moves per character, with about 20 frames of animation per move.
Music and sound effects.
Now, bearing in mind that we cannot just rip sprites and graphics from the Neo Cart version of a game. The NGPC uses tile based graphics with an absolute maximum of 6 colours (plus a neutral background colour) per eight-pixel-square tile - although it's more common to use 3 colours per tile in-game so that the two scroll planes can be used.
Sprites are more complicated again, we can have up to 64 three colour sprites on screen at any one time. This is just enough to render two largish fighter characters with enough room left over for some incidental effects (strike graphics etc).
So, overall, we're talking about at least 500 seperate graphics being produced. Bearing in mind the limitations of the form, an artist could only be expected to knock out a single static screen or a small animation sequence in a day. So, if we allow 100 days for the artwork.
Sound is, potentially, similar. If you're already paying a musician to compose tunes, then you should be able to rearrange said tunes for the NGPC fairly easily. For an average of 20 pieces of music in a game you would probably allow 40 to 50 days for the music.
Sound effects are slightly easier, maybe 10 or 20 days to produce 100 or or general effects (or it might be possible to reuse effects from a standard library)
So. Before a single line of code has been written, you've got to pay artists and musicians for a minimum of 150 days. As a rule of thumb, you can price that at an extremely conservative $250 a day, giving us a starting figure of $37,500.
Now. To code...
Menus and general framework stuff (high score tables) - somewhere in the region of 20 days.
Story boards (Doh! We need a writer! Call that 1 day per character) and intermissions - 20 days.
Basic game engine - 20 days
Collision rules - 10 days
AI - 30 days
Giving us a grandish total of 100 days for coding at our, extremely cheap, price of $250 adds another $25,000 to the price.
So, our "new" KoF game for the NGPC would cost somewhere in the region of $62,500.
So, without even worrying about Testing, production, promotion etc, at $30 Playmore would have to sell at least 2000 copies of the game to even cover that. Whereas, at $500, they only need to sell 125.
I would love to be wrong. I really would...
Cheers
Chris
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