#159847 - doudou - Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:48 pm
I would like to know how much commercial DS cartridge manufacturing cost. The numbers I have so far let me expect that it's around 5 EUR / cart for a 50000 production (whole package, including booklet).
I believe it's pretty high.
I had the same question concerning GBA a while ago and I was disapointed to notice that this information is really hard to gather:
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=10828&highlight=manufacturing
#159848 - doudou - Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:53 pm
The numbers I had were for: 64Mbit (4K EEPROM)
If you have info on different cartridges format, it would be more than welcome!
#159851 - Fury - Mon Jul 07, 2008 3:31 pm
5 bucks a cart if it includes the box/booklet etc is OK I guess, but the high production runs make it prohibitive for most backyard operators.
If it could be split up into say, 10 different projects so group of developers could share the cost and have their own project each that would be great. But I doubt that's possible.
Anyway why do you ask? You must have developed a pretty good game if you are thinking about going commercial with it.
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#159930 - doudou - Tue Jul 08, 2008 2:44 pm
#159939 - sgeos - Tue Jul 08, 2008 6:03 pm
This information is given on a need to know basis, and evidently some second party developers do not to know. I wonder if the pricing is uniform or not for the same configuration at the same point in time.
Do you know what the 5@50K figure is?
Is it the minimum or, a full container load, or the point at which the per unit cost bottoms out?
| Fury wrote: |
| If it could be split up into say, 10 different projects so group of developers could share the cost and have their own project each that would be great. But I doubt that's possible. |
It is possible to the extent that all of the projects can fit on one cart.
5@50K : 250K / 10 people = 25K per person.
-Brendan
#159981 - tepples - Wed Jul 09, 2008 1:10 am
It's not uniform. Console makers are known to give discounts for exclusive titles. And there are rumors going around that Nintendo isn't too fond of multicarts unless either 1. there's a theme tying them together (like Mario Party, WarioWare, Feel The Magic, and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz), or 2. they consist of previously published, previously commercial successful material from another platform (like Namco, Atari, or Midway collections).
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#160061 - Fury - Wed Jul 09, 2008 10:25 pm
That game looks excellent doudou. Very professional
Having a bunch of projects on one cart would be OK if it was a quality compilation of homebrew, but it's just not the same as a dedicated cart.
I wonder if you could put in a request at one of those 'tech jobs' sites for someone to negotiate with, say, Activision to licence your game? Surely there are people out there that know how to get games published.
It wouldn't be so much of a risk either, although the payout may not be so great.
Anyway I wish you all the best. This industry was started by the homebrewers. Time to take it back. LOL. First up against the wall: Activision
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#160068 - tepples - Thu Jul 10, 2008 2:14 am
In fact, Activision started as a "homebrew" company, producing unlicensed titles for Atari's console. Likewise with EA and Accolade against Sega. (Atari eventually ended up buying Accolade.)
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#160078 - sgeos - Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:19 am
| tepples wrote: |
| It's not uniform. Console makers are known to give discounts for exclusive titles. |
This is well known, but I'm curious if non-uniform pricing ends there or if there are even more factors. I'm specifically curious if there are any subjective pricing factors or if everything is done pretty well objectively.
-Brendan
#160136 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Thu Jul 10, 2008 8:11 pm
doudou, are you really considering an unlicensed print run? I'd love to see it. I guess you're just checking out all the options.
Do you think there's a good chance for an unlicensed published game to get into stores (real ones or the major online ones) and maybe get some larger media coverage in Europe?
In America, I think these are really the bigger obstacles to unlicensed publication these days. Distribution to any major stores is only available to licensed games, so you'd limited to just your own online mail-order distribution and hopefully some of the smaller online webstores and maybe a few actual independent video game shops (thank God there's a few left). And news or reviews in game magazines or larger websites would be hard to get, I think probably even impossible in some cases.
So I hope 50,000 isn't really the minimum order because that would be out of reach. It would be out of reach even for many licensed games--even many *GOOD*, licensed games--so probably the minimum is lower.
Even if it's as low as 5000, the per unit price would be a lot higher probably, up from 5 to maybe 7 or 8? (and that's 11 or 12 in Uhmerican money these days remember), and I still think even 5000 sounds like a lot for an unlicensed game, at least in the U.S. Does it seem like Europe would offer better opportunity? And Japan or the rest of the world, who knows?
I would sure love to see the unlicensed game make a return in this day and age of video games. I have tended to think of it on an even smaller scale, using premade flash cards of some type and with very small profits (or maybe none at all!), but if you think you can do it this way, I wish you success on it. The GBA version of your game is good and I think a DS version could certainly generate interest.
...word is bondage...
#160146 - Lynx - Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:13 pm
| Quote: |
| ...50,000 isn't really the minimum order... |
50,000 is nothing. Even crappy games, when they go into a retail store.. Heck, one major retail chain store will probably take 50,000 units to distribute to all of it's locations if not even more.
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#160156 - tepples - Thu Jul 10, 2008 11:15 pm
| Sweater Fish Deluxe wrote: |
| Even if it's as low as 5000, the per unit price would be a lot higher probably, up from 5 to maybe 7 or 8? (and that's 11 or 12 in Uhmerican money these days remember), and I still think even 5000 sounds like a lot for an unlicensed game, at least in the U.S. |
Anyone remember Tengen's NES efforts?
| Quote: |
| Does it seem like Europe would offer better opportunity? And Japan or the rest of the world, who knows? |
Language barriers might pose a problem unless some members of your team are heavily multilingual. A lot of games sold in Europe tend to have five language editions on the card or, in the case of some games based on children's television and movies, even five different SKUs. Games to be sold in Japan need to be coded for a roughly 4000-character writing system, so don't assume 256.
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#160160 - Dwedit - Thu Jul 10, 2008 11:24 pm
| tepples wrote: |
Anyone remember Tengen's NES efforts?
|
Who's going to the copyright office and claiming they need the design of the 10NES for a copyright infringement case?
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#160170 - tepples - Thu Jul 10, 2008 11:54 pm
OK, scratch that, try Camerica.
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#160180 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:23 am
| Lynx wrote: |
| 50,000 is nothing. Even crappy games, when they go into a retail store.. Heck, one major retail chain store will probably take 50,000 units to distribute to all of it's locations if not even more. |
That might be true for the slightly higher profile games that will actually *GET INTO* all those retail stores. But rememeber, just having a license doesn't guarantee that retail stores will carry your game, either. Most places like Gamestop or Wal*Mart have a pretty paltry selection of games compared to the complete release list. Many, many licensed games are seldom or even never seen in larger retail outlets.
Some small publishers try to guarantee large lot sales to big retailers of the sort you mentioned by giving retail exclusivity for a game to places like Toys'R'Us or Gamestop. This may guarantee them something like 50,000 units sold wholesale if they're lucky, but comes at the loss of all other sales outlets.
A quick perusal of VGChartz shows that the bottom of the total sales lists for DS games, in the U.S. or Japan, has many games selling less than in the 5000 to 10,000 copies range, with many even below that, including many games that have been out for a year or more. And, like I said, even some very good games are in this group, like Nervous Brickdown at 3317 units sold in over a year?! That's a travesty, but not surprising really when you think about the way the video game market works. I can only hope that it's European numbers were at least as good and that it ends up selling in about the same in japan now that it's been released there. That would still only bring it to about 10,000 copies worldwide, though.
...word is bondage...
#160201 - maximAL - Fri Jul 11, 2008 4:35 pm
back to pricing...about 5 or 6$ are the minimum - for the smallest cartridges. for the biggest ones it's about twice as much. and to my knowledge, there is no discount based on the number of copies. i don't know about minimum production numbers though.
concerning europe : to my understanding NOE is nothing but a distributer and handles translations and such. the whole licensing, production etc. matters are handled by NOA.
#160211 - sgeos - Fri Jul 11, 2008 9:31 pm
Wario World used to expose some of the shipping information. Last time I looked, a full container load of packaged GBA carts consisted of something like 33600 units. I think the minimum initial order was 5040 and and the minimum reorder was about 2000 or 3000 units. Orders had to be in multiples of 40 or something to that effect.
I have no recollection of DS cards, except that the numbers were in the same ballpark but different. Gamecube dics were cheaper but required larger runs IIRC.
IIRC, everything was shipped from Japan, so things like FCLs are a big deal. Was there air shipment? I think so, but I don't remember.
Assuming a minimum order of 8,000 units at $6 each, your order would cost you ~$50,000 plus shipping and insurance. You also need a place to drop 8,000 units (or ~60,000 or so if you opt for a FCL). Does anyone care to figure out roughly how much space 8,000 packaged units will take up? Naturally, all of this assumes you can work out a licensing deal; there are most certainly costs there as well.
As far as lots of stuff goes, my grandfather sold grass seed. He sold it by the carload. "How many carloads would you like?" ...where a car is a rail car. That is a lot of seed. Without looking into shipping containers, I think that there is a good chance one FCL of games is the same size as a train car of grass seed.
As far as 50K units goes, how many retail arrangements have you set up on this order of magnitude? =) To be really facetious, how many car loads have you shipped?
-Brendan