Current Events > Where all the money in a game goes

(+) Yeah! (+)

So here is the breakdown of a board game sale. Let's say a board game's MSRP is $50. Source: Stonemaier games blog.

The publisher sells the game to a distributor for about $13 each. $1 goes to the designer of the game. $2-$11 goes towards making more games and publisher costs, the remaining $1 can be considered the publisher's "profit".

Distributors/wholesalers sell them for $25 to retailers.

Retailers sell them for the average $50 making $25 in profit every sale, with nearly ALL of it going back into overhead costs (rent, reordering, wages, etc)

This is different for amazon/online stores that can sell them for crazy left due to no overhead.

So how do video games differ from this model? Has Nintnedo said how much it costs to makeper cartridge?

Depends.

Game sales are increasingly digital and digital tends to result in higher profit margins(especially for platform holders own games) given the lack of packaging, shipping and storage medium costs and no retail cut(though digital stores take a cut usually. 30% seems to be the standard which is less than the 50% of retailers in your scenario)

But yeah its probably similar for video game retail.
---