Quote:Original post by Zatun
@Tom Sloper - Thanks for the reply. I don't have the contract yet.

I never said you did have the contract. What I said is, that's where you'll find the answer to your question. In other words, WE cannot tell you whether you would "have to return the advance payment if the title does not perform," since YOU are going to negotiate that point into your contract. Certainly WE have not seen your contract, if you haven't yet!

Quote:Original post by Tom Sloper

Quote:Original post by Zatun
@Tom Sloper - Thanks for the reply. I don't have the contract yet.

I never said you did have the contract. What I said is, that's where you'll find the answer to your question. In other words, WE cannot tell you whether you would "have to return the advance payment if the title does not perform," since YOU are going to negotiate that point into your contract. Certainly WE have not seen your contract, if you haven't yet!

Sorry. I misinterpreted your statement.

Quote:
[...] if read this correctly, if the retail price is $10, then for every unit sold you get ~$1.60.

You know it depends. If you are going for digital only, that sounds quite bad. But it seems that the publisher wants to put the game in boxes. Now if you would try that on your own your would have to pay ALLOT upfront. The biggest problem is that printers and cd manufacturer want a minimum number produced and to get the game onto shelves they have to "entertain" the retailers.

And since it is in boxes the chances that your game will sell are quite height. This is for a number of reasons: 1. The publisher has to get the money back they invested into producing the game (even if only the physical media). 2. Since it is on a shelve it will have much more exposure.

The devil is in the detail:

Quote:
Original post by Zatun

Retail price- X
Tax- 19%
Retail fee-30%
Distributors fee- 20%
Production-1 X/unit

The publisher will take 60% of what remains and I will be left with 40%.

If this is in the contract, great for you! If not then Net-Profits, means AFTER the publisher got all his upfront costs back. If your game does not sell as expected, you get no money at all. The problem is even worse, if the publisher thinks that the game will be the next hit and has a bunch of CDs produced but is only a Ok game and thus under performs (by the publishers estimate). You get no money, even though it might perform better than in your wildest dreams.

Quote:Original post by Zatun
Retail price- X
Tax- 19%
Retail fee-30%
Distributors fee- 20%
Production-1 X/unit

Can you explain that last line?

a. What is production exactly? (I know what it means to me, but what it means to me is not compatible with this formula above.)

b. And what does "1 X/unit" mean? (Surely it doesn't mean "one retail price per unit" because that doesn't make sense.)

@Rioki - Thanks for your reply. I do agree its not financially feasible to print the boxes and the DVDs yourself and there is no way you can have a reach of the retailers like the distributors do.

Thanks for explaining "NET profits". I guess I will have to be really careful what I ask for.

@Tom Sloper: Hi Tom,1 X is 1 dollar or X euros of the production fee. According to the publisher, production here refers to the manufacturing of the CD/DVD, printing costs, etc

Quote:Original post by Zatun
1 X is 1 dollar or X euros of the production fee.

I still have no idea what you're saying there. But I think you've gotten the answer to your question?

That X in the formula is probably the cost of CD production, manual, packaging and such. You might want to get that defined more accurately, I think.

My last contract has been several years ago, but it might still be of interest for you. I had a similar "share profits" deal, but a honest one, so that the contract said "per unit profits". Don't take the wording too serious, I'm translating freely here, but I think it might be a good idea to watch out for a term like this.

Retail price 39.99 Euros
- VAT 16% 34.48 Euros
- retail span 50something% 17.25 Euros
- per-unit costs (DVD, hull, manual) ~2.50 Euros 14.75 Euros
- 50% share -> our win per unit sold was 7.37 Euros

And we actually got that exact sum per unit, paided quarterly. It never actually paid for all the work we invested, but it was a fun time, a great learning experience, it impressed enough to get me my first job in game development, and we made some friends along the way. I already left game development again several years ago, but I don't regret anything :-)

Quote:Original post by Schrompf
That X in the formula is probably the cost of CD production, manual, packaging and such. You might want to get that defined more accurately, I think.

My last contract has been several years ago, but it might still be of interest for you. I had a similar "share profits" deal, but a honest one, so that the contract said "per unit profits". Don't take the wording too serious, I'm translating freely here, but I think it might be a good idea to watch out for a term like this.

Retail price 39.99 Euros
- VAT 16% 34.48 Euros
- retail span 50something% 17.25 Euros
- per-unit costs (DVD, hull, manual) ~2.50 Euros 14.75 Euros
- 50% share -> our win per unit sold was 7.37 Euros

And we actually got that exact sum per unit, paided quarterly. It never actually paid for all the work we invested, but it was a fun time, a great learning experience, it impressed enough to get me my first job in game development, and we made some friends along the way. I already left game development again several years ago, but I don't regret anything :-)

Schrompf - Thanks for sharing your details.