TLOU has sold over 6 million copies

For perspective, those numbers are better than Bioshock Infinite's and the same as Tomb Raider's (both high quality games released before TLOU on multiple platforms). Its also won a ton of awards and Naughty Dog will hold several presentations about it at the GDC.

Like I've said before, I love how TLOU is a part of a genre (survival horror) that many retail publishers seem to have written off and I hope that some of them rethink their position on survival horror in particular and less popular genres in general.

A sequel to TLOU wouldn't fill me with rage or anything, but I really hope the team makes something original. Naughty Dog has proven repeated repeatedly that they don't need to cling to a franchise in order to find commercial success.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2014/03/14/2014-naughty-dog-gdc-talks-and-the-last-of-us-accolades/

i am so glad to see this game is selling so well

Hmm, glad to hear that it was a commercial failure

Surprised though it only sold 6mill, people sure praised enough.

Six million on one system

Glad to see a high quality game sells well......

Well spank my ass and call me Raymond. That's about as much as Uncharted 2 & 3, wasn't expecting those numbers so soon.

It's sad that we live in a time where 6 million isn't considered impressive. MGS2 was one of the biggest games of all time and it sold 7 million. TLOU has sold 6 million in barely 9 months. 6 million means $240 million at the box office. Even if half of it went into the retailer cut, development and marketing budget and distribution (no royalties since this is a first party game) then you are looking at a cool $120 million in profits.

Actually the development budget was probably the same as the Uncharted games which all cost $20 million. The team was much smaller (60 people vs over 150 for U2 and U3) until the very end, and we all know Sony doesn't spend a lot on marketing. It had pretty decent advertising though so I am going to go with $10 million. We know that the retailer cut is 20% and distribution costs are around 10%. That gives us.

Development Budget: $20 million
Marketing Budget: $10 million
Distribution Costs: $24 million
Retailer Cut: $48 million
Total costs: $102 million

Total Profits: $138 million.

This is probably the most successful Sony game last gen.

6 million is a failure?

You do know right that it doesnt cost that much to port a game right?

But looking at Tomb Raider, Hitman who both sold close to that and was commercial failures.

Also with over 70mill ps3´s out there 6mill is not a lot. Its less then 10%

Got a link to those numbers?

Also i am surprised if they got away with only 100mill in dev cost,

That has no pertinence with what I said. It sold 6 million on one system (PS3 alone).The average game sells 1.5 million on each system.

And? i dont see what point you are trying to make 6mill copies is still 6mill copies, yes there might be a slight difference in pc price, but when most are sold on consoles it makes it negligible. Also there is less cost involved as most pc sales are done digitally.

Yes, I can tell you can't see the point.

Let's try to rephrase it:

The Last of Us sold 6 million copies with a ~70 million userbase (PS3 only)

Tomb Raider sold 6 million copies with a ~250 million userbase (PS3+360+PC+Wii U)

That's one reason why I keep the PS3 around. TLOU is on my PS3 must-play backlog list.

@Jacanuk: Failure is subjective. They were only deemed as such because they failed to meet a certain sales target. In TLoU's case, it exceeded Naughty Dog's expectations, therefore making it a huge success. Not to mention its a new IP compared to Tomb Raider and Hitman, both of which have been around for much longer. Plus there's a movie in the works so that should be telling you something.

Got a point there XD

So it pretty much outsold the Uncharted games?

Imagine how many copies of the last of us that would be sold if it was on all platforms. Im glad it is an exclusive though, if you wanna play THE best game ever made in history you have get yourself a ps3.

Great to hear. Hopefully this sends a strong message to publishers as well. If this was developed by EA or Capcom you would get microtransactions, 10 hours of non stop infected killing action, a co-op partner to replace Ellie who would be a dudebro former soldier and your kill count by the end of the game would be over 9000! Thank god Sony let Naughty Dog do their thing. I'm currently playing through Spec Ops: The Line and it's a great game but you can't help but feel the Publishers touch at every turn. Hard to imagine what it would have been had the devs been given complete freedom.

Congradulations on the Sales, But even though its a decent survival game. Its definately not horror.its just a new varation of a zombie game. Zombies are Stupid and Frustrating. Because Zombie are brain dead. Naughty Dawg deserves credit for its humans but the infected ? Not even remotely good.

Bioshock Infinite is a high quality game? Hmph. Go figure.

You have a point there.

Since most media also reported it as a surprise that they were called a commercial failure.

Dvader you know the only troll here is you, you are probably one of the biggest on gamespot.

I know you're trying to make a point and I agree, but Tomb Raider didn't come out on the Wii U. And adding PC to any game automatically causes the attach rate to plummet dramatically.

Yeah, it didn't come out on Wii U. Stupid deviantart and its photoshops deceived me. Still, while making sure of that, I saw it came out on Mac, which opens up an even bigger market for it, with the boom of Apple produts.

If by saying plummeting you allude to piracy, that's irrelevant when comparing proportional sales: a pirated game counts as a non-sale; a user who plays a pirated game counts exactly as one who did not play the game.

The gist of my point is that a game that sold 9% in one system has sold better than a game that has sold 3% on 5 system. Had TLoU been multiplatform it would have sold 10-12 million. As it is it sold 6 but it also sold systems. I know 3 people among my friends who bought a PS3 in 2013 specifically for TLoU.

Descent?

@ ojmstr

Despite The Games best efforts to make me reconnsider if killing enemies was the best option as resources, especially shivs, are scarse, I did it anyway. Didn't spend much time time "Surviving" as I did Thriving ! :), I even gained a new Apreciation for the Molotov Cocktails. And I figured out what purpose Listen mode surves in the game.

His point is invalid since it doesn't matter that one was multi and the other was exclusive, in the end both games were pretty much in the same budget range, and if not then Square need to have a chat with the accountant with Naughty Dog because they have a secret they need to share. And all you need to look at is the profit margin, and if you take 6mill x 40 its the same as 6mill x 40 (prices avg estimate)

Also they funny enough already at 3.4mill called it a succes http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-09-sony-declares-the-last-of-us-a-success-with-over-3-4-million-global-sales, Which is funny because at 3.4mill in just 4weeks for Tomb raider called it a finicial failure.

But in the end who gives a flying f about my or anyone on this boards opinion in the matter, if Sony and Naughty Dog feels it a success then great, they are after all the one paying the show. Also what puzzles is Square and their way of doing business.

Try finish the game on survivor mode, then you have no listen mode at all :) im on survivor + now and its hard as f... but i upgrade my weapons so i think this run through will be the easyest of the survivor runthroughs ive had. There is a new dificulty level coming out right around the corner ive heard with new weapons and upgrades and 4 new mp maps :) Can`t wait.

@ ojmstr

I'm not going to play above normal until I figure out the intricacies of The Game's Design. I still find my self setting off Alarms when I clearly did nothing wrong, or get seen sneaking up behind an enemy by that same enemy, or people not showing up in listen mode because they are with in view but invisible, still learning the effects of Smoke Bombs on the infected.

I shot an arrow through an Armoured guy's face yesterday, and not only did he not die instantly, he managed to spot me, despit me being in cover after the arrow hit, mind you it was a difficult shot as I was quite a distance away and he was walking about . Not an easy shot by anymeans for a moving target with a "delayed" result to consider.

Sometimes the game is just borderline inconsistant, like a clicker being able to see you, or a human being completely blind to you.

Not to mention sticking to cover is finicky as hell and CQC is absolute shit, which is messed up considering some scenarios can't be stealthed or restealthed (like The Infected).

Yeah I'm never going to play a game with this many issues on the hardest difficulty. I learned my lesson about trying to do that along time ago.

Oh yeah one last thing. Listen mode was mode for doing stealth in cramped maze like places where you theres no good vantage points to moniter enemy patterns. This happens quite alot as the level design is bad for stealth and even shittier for action. I believe it wouldn't be necessary if the levels were designed much better or if the characters were less "gimped".

Oh and the controls.... It is extremely annoying when I'm using a weapon that takes forever to reload and theres a runner right infront of me and I have no choice but to cancel the reload by melee'ing him. Now I press the reload button And nothing happens, and a clicker shows up, can't melee a clicker so I was dead. I later found out that after you melee it unequips your gun, and to reload it you need to have it equiped 1st, technically it was equiped, pressing the reload button in melee mode does absolutely nothing so why didn't they make it reload the weapon ? And with Joel, in some scenarios baddies seem to melee way faster than you, or your melee is only effective at the very end of your animation but an infected's at the beginning of theirs. Plus some humans can dodge and counter Joel's melee's all together. on top of that theres still a bit of weapon sway even after fully upgrading Joel. Its bad enough I have to do this with a PS3 controller already, why do they feel they need to artificially gimp my abilities even more ? On top of that, the infected, particularly the clickers, their heads are never ever still theres absolutely no way to deliberately headshot a moving one, even at 5 paces away (to reduces the arrows delay), and it has to be a head shot, a body shot won't kill a clicker, and thats just for stealth, its 10x worse in action because when they come at you they still move too akwardly to shoot centre mass, let alone a headshot, and yet still move faster than you can run backwards, this is annoying when playing as Joel but when playing a Ellie its a nightmare because its intstant death factor in the weapon sway and you got your self one big rage inducing cluster ****. And stealthing clickers is extremely annoying as you can't sneak up behind one, they move faster than you can maintain the noise/speed threshold for alarming clickers, I trie to get them from the Side with a T-Bone maneuver, but this is very unreliable, doesn't always work. On top of that Ellie's Stealth Kills are loud as hell, which is completely fucked up after David takes your backpack away. And the animation takes way too long, combine that with level design and leaving the scene of the crime is a real pain in the ass when theres still two baddies left.

Wow, I didn't realise how many issues the game had.

lol if i didn´t know better i would assume you were a comedian.

But even when you do try its not that funny, just kinda sad.

@ dvader654

Maybe he's confusing you with me.

Happens alot.

Nice! 6 million isn't quite the Titan yet, but its definitely up there for sure!

wich reminds me, i still need to play it.

The first two Naughty Dog PS3 games had development budgets of 20 million dollars. TLOU's budget might be marginally higher (though like U2 and 3, it has a 15 hour campaign, multiplayer and was developed in a couple years by a team of less than hundred people) but certainly not by much.

According to both Squenix and the executive producer of Tomb Raider, 3.4 million was nowhere near enough for Tomb Raider to even break even, let alone be profitable (the first month target was 5 million). The same article (but not the exec producer on the record) states Tomb Raider's budget was a little shy of 100 million dollars.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/04/joystiq-interview-talking-uncharted-2-with-naughty-dogs-evan-w/

The budget for the first game was said to be around $20 million dollars, and that had to include that engine creation from scratch, which is a big thing. Since you are using the same engine, has this been a cheaper endeavor? Are you guys spending the same amount?

We are spending the same amount. You always want to be able to just do more. Definitely it is a leg up to start with that technological foundation, but what you try to do with it is just that much more.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-09-sony-declares-the-last-of-us-a-success-with-over-3-4-million-global-sales

Sony has declared PlayStation 3 exclusive The Last of Us a success with over 3.4 million sales worldwide.

These sales, which include the Blu-ray disc and download versions, were accurate as of 3rd July - three weeks after the Naughty Dog developed game launched on 14th June - and mean it's the fastest-selling PS3 title of 2013.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-17-tomb-raider-finally-achieved-profitability-by-the-end-of-last-year

Tomb Raider actually sold around 3.4m during its first month on shop shelves - no small amount. But by Square Enix's standards it was nowhere near enough.

----------------------

But from comments made to Eurogamer last night by Tomb Raider executive producer Scot Amos, it wasn't until much later in the year that the game broke even.

It tallies with something Eurogamer sister site Games Industry discussed last year - that a game like Tomb Raider with a budget approaching $100m (£60m) needs to sell an extraordinary amount to break even - at least 5m copies. Which was what Square Enix's expectations were.

@CarnageHeart: Great post, I had been looking for budget figures for Naughty Dog games. Conclusive evidence that Square Enix is mismanaged: they throw a disproportionate amount of money at a developer which could make the same game with much less and consequentially they generate unrealistic sale expectations. It happened with Hitman, it happened with Tomb Raider.

@Black_Knight_00: All three Gears of War games were made for $10 million each. I remember seeing slides for the first two games and they had only 45 total developers.

Precisely. Now: GTA V cost $250 million, but my guess is that a big slice of that are just licensing fees and royalties for the fuckload of songs it has and the celebrity cameos on the radio. Plus the game is huge and has possibly the most ambitious online component ever seen on consoles.

Where the hell did those $100 million go in the Tomb Taider development? It's a great game, but $100 million? Crystal Dynamics is no John Romero: they don't spend their budget on diamond toilet paper, where did Squeenix dump all that dough?

Glad it did well, hope this game is on PS now when it comes out, I love to play it in my Vita :D

A lot of that could be marketing. They revealed the game two years before it came out which means the marketing effectively lasted for 2 whole years. Another problem is how long the game was in development. Underworld came out in 2008 which means Tomb Raider spent 4.5 years in development. Gears game usually took only 2 years of total dev time. Gears 3 was delayed by Microsoft but likely finished in two years as well.

Uncharted 1 cost $20 million to make back when ND had 75 devs. But they fucked up and lost one year trying to get the engine up and running, so it took 3 years to make. Uncharted 2 was made by 150 people, but finished in only two years so the budget remained the same. Uncharted 3 was done in 2 years as well, same budget.

Now God of War Acension cost almost $50 million, GoW3 cost $44 million. Both had 3 years of dev time, but Sony Santa Monica is a huge studio with 220 people. (Well, not anymore). So some studios are just poorly managed. SSM helps out with a lot of other games, but in the end when Ascension flopped and Stig's IP got cancelled, they had to take the blame for both of those games. Keep in mind, Sony dev teams do not have to make games for four platforms so they are smaller.

Huge advertisement budgets are another sign of mismanagement, in my opinion. If there is one thing that the internet brought to this industry, it's free advertising through the hundreds of thousands of youtube gaming channels and word of mouth on message boards. Sure, spend money into avertising to rake in the few remaining people without internet, but the gamers who see an ad for a game on TV find it redundant: they've already heard of it months before on Machinima or IGN or the myriads of minor gaming channels like Angry Joe or Total Biscuit. No need to spend all that much: in the internet age if the game is good it will advertise itself.

Last minute delays (meaning that after launch ad dollars had been spent, the release date was shifted, necessitating the spending of more ad dollars) could increase advertising costs, but I don't see how a delay which happened before tv and print ads were purchased could have much impact on an ad budget.