Journalist and games industry interviewer, Kiwi Talkz, has claimed that the development budget for the upcoming Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is around $100 million. He went on to say that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond needs to sell between 4.5 – 5 million copies for the game to break even for Nintendo. This is a tall task as the best-selling entry Metroid Dread for the original Nintendo Switch system sold just over 3 million copies.
“Prime 1 cost about $10 million dollars to make, Prime 4 is costing about $100 million to make. This game needs to sell between 4.5 – 5 million to break even”
I will personally buy one million copies of this, so there’s a fifth of what they need.
that’s that’s a lot of money
They should charge 1 person $100M for 1 copy and everyone else gets it for the normal price. Boom, instant return on investment
That budget definitely shows… In that desert area… A budget so huge they didn’t need monolith soft to make the open areas
Is too much for a Metroid game. I don’t see them seeling more than 3 million copies. Maybe this budget includes the development cost from the scrapped versions
What are you basing your estimate of his sales on..?
Metroid as a series is much more succesful in brand awareness than actual sales, Metroid Dread, The best selling game in the series, sold less than 4 million units, which is not a bad number by any means, but Metroid has never been a huge seller like other franchises. What makes this sales goal hard is that it must become the best selling game in franchise history, when metroid prime remastered didn exactly sell a lot compared to other Nintendo rerelases.
This has to be including the scrapped development build. Switch games aren’t normally this expensive to make, so it could only add up to this size of a budget if it’s for two Switch games
That’s BS, they just need to sell 1.5million to break even considering that will most likely sell it a $70. Anything surpassing 1.5million is profit for them.
That would only bring sales revenue to the $100 million mark. It would not give Nintendo $100 million towards their losses. $100 million is the game’s production cost, similar to a movie’s production cost, it does not include marketing or production of the actual cards, nor any other costs to bring to market. Then you have to take into account the percentage of sales that go to the stores that will be selling the game (physical). You have to subtract the money going to the retailers, then add marketing, physical media production costs, logistics, and any other costs outside of the game’s production on top of the $100 million, then you can find out the number of sales needed to recoup. Now, if they are including all costs to bring to market, then you only have to subtract retailer’s cut, from the $70 or $80 price for each game sold physically, to figure out sales needed. However, normally when cost for entertainment is put out, it only includes direct production cost (what it costs to produce the actual game, movie, song, etc; not the costs to bring it to market). One thing Nintendo has that many games makers don’t, is they are also the publisher. If they were not, that would be another thirty percent or so that would have to be shared (sometimes up to sixty percent, if the developer gets screwed). I think realistically three to three and a half million would do it. Maybe even two and a half, if it goes heavier on digital and we haven’t seen a lot of secondary marketing here. Mostly straight from Nintendo; so most marketing costs will be point of sale marketing and maybe some cross promotion.
Ok, but even if Nintendo don’t make the money like they would on animal crossing, Mario or Zelda, it’s all about keeping the hardcore Nintendo base fan happy as well, don’t forget we purchase all the other big hitters as well so a little give and take, ya know!
He’s wrong, that’s the budget of kirby air riders…
They should take some of that budget and put it in marketing. We fans still know very little on this title. There is still time for a 30 minute direct Nintendo!
This has to be an estimate based on the full scrapping a restarting of this game. While metroid is a well-known franchise, it is absolutely not as heavy hitting as other Nintendo franchises and if it hadn’t been completely restarted after who-knows how far into the original development, then it wouldn’t be even close to this amount, which still seems like someone accidentally added a “0” to that number. Just my thoughts.
Making video games isn’t cheap.
Certainly isn’t, look how much gta 6 is costing, 1 to 2 billion, but then this is gona sell through the roof
I agree that this sounds like an estimate based on the project being scrapped and restarted.
That being said I don’t think it’s unrealistic at all that this could make i A profit. Metroid dread is the best selling game in the series And it’s a 2D Platformer. I adore that game, but it’s just true that 2D platformer is in general don’t attract as much attention as first person shooters.
With this game being on both the switch one and two I Could easily see it at least matching Dreads Numbers if not surpassing them.
The marketing for this game has been really poor to this point. Nintendo are treating this game like a B-tier release and I don’t think they can expect top sales. I hope I’m wrong because this series deserves it.
Well the game DID restart development in 2019, and is only now releasing in 2025. Makes sense that it might cost such an amount.
I just hope it’ll be worth the 8-and-a-half-year wait.