Why games are worth what they are worth and where does each of the dollars you pay for them go

After 23 years in BioWare working in sagas like Mass Effect O Dragon Age, Mark Darrah is one of those voices in the industry that you can trust without giving too much thought to what he can explain to you. Things, like for example, where does the money you pay for a game go.

In the last video of his channel YouTube

detail point by point how the cost of a game is calculated and in what is invested each one of the dollars -dollars, in this case- that its development, promotion and sale may entail.

Why are games worth what they are worth?

Darrah focuses on the Actual Price of about $ 70 in the United States, but in reality it speaks of percentages that could be applied to any type of price.

In fact, what the programmer and producer assures is that, counting his life in the market, his sales, sales, and the ups and downs with respect to the public interest, the average real price of a triple A game is in about 50 dollars.

Those 50 dollars / dollars end up distributed like this:

15 dollars: in the case of the physical manufacture the game, send to stores, store profits. In the case of digital, those 15 dollars is the average that is destined for the platform (Microsoft, PlayStation, Steam or whatever it touches).

5 dollars: marketing and advertising to publicize the game so that when it hits the stores it doesn’t get left on the shelf.
5 dollars: Overheads at the level of parent company salaries, human resources and team support in areas not closely related to development.
15 dollars: Company margin and profits for both the study and the parent companies and financial supports that want to get a slice of their investment.

10 dollars: cost of development at the office level, salaries, equipment, material and more.

It is certainly one of those cases in which it seems incredible that the development cost it ends up limiting itself so much against the rest of the expenses, but unfortunately it is one of the reasons why prices do not stop rising and the development world is increasingly unhappy.

It is not a problem only of this industry, of course, but it is appreciated that from time to time someone talks about it without mincing the tongue and giving value to each of the processes through which a development of dFrom the initial idea until it runs on our consoles or PC.