Could Valve make a Billion with HL2 over 3 years.?

[slap]

I wonder if HL2 has the potential to earn this amount of money for Valve over a sustained selling period of say, 3 years..? What do you lot think..! :frog:

 

[brightgreen]

that's unpossible!!

 

[B.Calhoun]

I really doubt it. HL continued to do so well over the years because it was pretty much the best there was but now thats all changed and many advanced games will spring off of HL2 and will shorthen its life span...i think.

But HL2 will still make millions

 

[Ames]

That's beyond insane. Although it is probable.

1,000,000,000/50 = 20,000,000 million copies need to be sold. And that's not counting the actual amount they get from the game.

Half-Life has only sold 12 million.

 

[RhapSidious]

Well HL1 sold over 8,000,000 copies worldwide over the past 5 years.

If HL2 does the same 8M (regardless of the time it takes) and we assume a average cost of $55.00 USD, then that would be total GROSS sales of approximately $440,000,000.00 USD.

Now there are alot of people you will buy (have bought) the Silver, Gold and CE versions but I say this will be neutralized by the lowering of HL2's cost over time and ATI voucher factor (which probably cost ATI somwhere between $25-35 each) so I feel the $55.00 average cost is reasonable.

Now this is $440M in GROSS sales. What Valve's PROFIT from these sales is (minus prod. costs, salaries, distrubition cost(retail), etc) I have no idea. Plus no way to tell how many of the 8M would have bought retail vs. via Steam.

Short answer: No.

EDIT: bottem line impossible.

 

[UndeadScottsman]

Lets say for the sake of argument that it's absolutly free for Valve to sell a game through Steam. We'll counter it out by saying everyone buys the 50 dollar version..
1,000,000,000/50=20,000,000 copies need to be sold.

(3*365*24*60*60)=94,608,000 seconds in 3 years.

It would take a sale every 4.7304 seconds for 3 years straight in order to amass a billion... I doubt Half-Life 2 will even get a quarter of that ammount in three years.

 

[koopa]

Yeah, but how about if we count licensing Source too?

 

[RhapSidious]

Yeah, but how about if we count licensing Source too?

That will probablyl cost about $300,000.00 a pop, super max $1M. It'll take alot of licensed games.

 

[joule]

A BILLION?! 1,000,000,000!!!

That's a 1 followed by 9 zeros!

That seems a little too optimistic.
It will never happen...unfortunately. :dozey:

 

[rammstein]

licensing only gets about $1,000,000

the vouchers were worth in total $20,000,000 as they were actutioned off

 

[JPack]

$1B?

Even all the games in the Doom series hasn't generated that kind of revenue - not even 1/4 of that.

 

[azz0r]

A billion dollars? muhahahah muhahahahh muhahahaah muhahahaha

/end austin powers

 

[blahblahblah]

Revenue is what you charge for a product. Profit is what you earn after all your costs have paid (including salary).

In this case, Valve is charging $50, $60, and $90 for HL2. If you make some assumptions, I would imagine that people will buy 45%, 45%, and 10% respectively. Now lets assume that HL2 sells 10 million copies. A quick calculation in excel shows that the expected revenue from HL2 is $585 million.

Assuming a 10% profit margin (which is probably on the high side for the PC gaming industry) you get a profit of $58.5 million.

Basically, the owners of Valve won't be Bill Gates wealthy, but they will be really, really well off.

 

[Tremere]

naw it's not very realistic it would go beyond anything anyone expected , but i would not be surprised if we see these kind of revenues in the games industry in the future.

Our generation plays computer games and we will still be buying and playing games when we are in an elderly home.

 

[skater4evr5]

i bet you anything they can make a billion off of it Guess how.

Just sell one copy to bill gates, and no one else.

and done!

 

[Wild_Ragnar]

lol, one billion here in sweden i with 12zeros (im not kidding) :afro:

 

[Darth Valium]

???
dont know for sure if its the same for you, but the english billions are milliarden(1000^3) here in germany, followed by billions(1000^4).

its a matter of correct translation.

 

[poseyjmac]

1 billion dollars maybe, but think bigger.. what about 1......million dollars? muahaha!

 

[Akrin]

lol, one billion here in sweden i with 12zeros (im not kidding) :afro:

Such is the case with the majority of the world. Billion = 10^9 (part of the "short scale" ) in english speaking countries, and brazil.

Having a billion = 10^9 was originally french/italian convention (in the 1700s), then later adopted by the US to differ themselves from the UK (which also later adopted this convention, atleast officially). Then france officially went back to the long scale in the 1900s (long scale => billion = million^2 = 10^12, trillion = million^3 = 10^18, ...).

(Note: Some contries that use the short scale use a variation on the word "milliard" to represent 10^9, not a variation on "billion", though trillion is still 10^12 and so on => ie Russia)

...

Irrelevant, off topic... beautiful.

 

[The Monkey]

In english:
1 million= 1,000,000
1 billion= 1,000,000,000
1 trillion= 1,000,000,000,000

In swedish(and a lot of other countries):
1 million= 1 000 000
1 milliard= 1 000 000 000
1 billion= 1 000 000 000 000
1 billiard= 1 000 000 000 000 000
1 trillion= 1 000 000 000 000 000 000

And back in topic; no way.

 

[Mr-Fusion]

No they couldn't make a billion, that's ridiculous. But they may be able to make....1 MILLION DOLLARS!

 

[tvharti]

Revenue is what you charge for a product. Profit is what you earn after all your costs have paid (including salary).

In this case, Valve is charging $50, $60, and $90 for HL2. If you make some assumptions, I would imagine that people will buy 45%, 45%, and 10% respectively. Now lets assume that HL2 sells 10 million copies. A quick calculation in excel shows that the expected revenue from HL2 is $585 million.

Assuming a 10% profit margin (which is probably on the high side for the PC gaming industry) you get a profit of $58.5 million.

Basically, the owners of Valve won't be Bill Gates wealthy, but they will be really, really well off.

Even if Valve sell around 10 Mio copies of HL2 - i guess you still forget about the fact that not every copy will be sold at FULL price ... from the moment HL2 is being sold the prices will drop and within a year or 1 1/2 you will find it in the budget range (let's say 25-40 $)

this will definitely "decrease" the total sales units ... nevertheless HL2 will be a cash-cow as you haven't seen it before

 

[Darth Valium]

noone know how steam will develop. perhaps we ll have to pay for playing/updating. this will increase the revenue further.
---
i've seen an interesting documentation about former microsoft-employees, and what they are doing after their ms-time.
ít seems that dough and gabe are very influenced by the ms style, which was described as following.

a) you need a cash cow, no matter if its worse or good
b) while the cash is flowing, reninvest the revenue to develop another cash cow
c) release "new" cash cow
d) start over

---
perhaps hl2 wont hit the one billion-mark, hl3 will.

 

[Gorgon]

that's unpossible!!

I second that,

its not a movie, its a game,

Only movies such as LOTR or star wars can get a total of a billoin or more.

cause number of gamers to movie watchers is:

1 gamers for every 20 movie watcher. :hmph:

 

[eediot]

Valve will make around 400 mill off hl2 and it's offshoots, i think. 1 billion is impossible right now.

 

[Jimlad]

In english:
1 million= 1,000,000
1 billion= 1,000,000,000
1 trillion= 1,000,000,000,000

In swedish(and a lot of other countries):
1 million= 1 000 000
1 milliard= 1 000 000 000
1 billion= 1 000 000 000 000
1 billiard= 1 000 000 000 000 000
1 trillion= 1 000 000 000 000 000 000

And back in topic; no way.

Incorrect. In English, it's
one million = 1,000,000
one thousand million = 1,000,000,000
one billion = 1,000,000,000,000
one thousand billion = 1,000,000,000,000,000
one trillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000
etc.

I think you have the English system confused with the American one, perhaps?

 

[PlagueX]

Now just to make it fun
If we now want to know how many turkish liré Valve would have, if they decided to change valuta, then if we say they earn their 300.000.000 $ and 1.000.000 liré is just a little more than 1 dollard, so we just say 1.000.000 liré = 1 $
then Valve would make
300.000.000.000.000 Liré
That is 300.000 Billions, so there you go! :afro:

 

[Apollo 13]

Valve will not even make $400,000,000 so I don't know why ppl are saying that. People willl warez the game and Valve will lose a lot of money from that. I think Valve will make the same amount or $1-2 million more then what they made off of Half Life 1. To many people here think every PC owner knows about HL2...when that is not true at all. GTA: SA and Halo 2 will make more money then HL2 because the game will get advertised all over the networks, also more people own consoles

 

[commando]

Billion is going abit too far isn't it now? lol

100 million is still LOADS to say. 100million copies i would just even say "maybe"

 

[Patton]

I really doubt it. HL continued to do so well over the years because it was pretty much the best there was but now thats all changed and many advanced games will spring off of HL2 and will shorthen its life span...i think.

But HL2 will still make millions

I don't know. I'm looking forward to HL2 for the same reasons that good old HL had so much staying power: modding. Look at alot of the games that have come out lately. They seem like a real bitch to mod. I'm betting alot of modders will want to pick up HL2 simply because of the similarities and added freedom from regular HL. I really hope it has the same staying power, honestly.

It certainly won't do a billion in sales, though.