Metal Gear Solid 4 Must Sell 1 Million Day One To Justify Cost

Payton said the new “Metal Gear Solid” needs to sell over a million copies on the first day it goes on sale due to its costly production, but that may be a tough mark to hit given sluggish PS3 sales.

For this to happen Sony would need a miracle as high profile first part titles are hardly selling right now. To see this all you have to do is look at the sales data for Uncharted and Ratchet & Clank Future, which are Sony’s big holiday exclusives. According to VGChartz both have only sold 0.13m and 0.22m respectively after several weeks of release. Either the PS3 install base has to increase by huge leaps and bounds by MGS4′s Spring 2008 release or they need to go multiplatform.

More interesting information from the article:

Top next-generation video games cost between $10 million and $50 million, according to IDC videogame analyst Billy Pidgeon. That means publishers must hedge their bets by going onto as many platforms as possible.

“You might be able to weather one title coming in at 500,000 in sales,” said Pidgeon. “But two or three failures like that and even big publishers are going to be hurting.”

Via Reuters

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