Dhruin

"I also wondered where they got their $12 retail markup. I was under the impression that retailers made so little money on software they HAD to trade used games. Granted, I'm sure some of that $12 also goes to shipping and distribution, but that's like a 25% markup. Are retailers that sell used games lying to us that they need to do so to remain in business?"

It's very difficult to run a retail business at 25% markup (20% gross margin). My store needs around $60k / month to break even. Wages, other related expenses, rent, electricity, phones, shrinkage, 6% advertising fund, maintenance... That means we need gross sales of $300,000 / month just to pay the bills but then we haven't contributed a cent to the company. We then need to make a big enough profit at store level to pay our share of head office's expenses - that huge distribution system, all the logistics and accounting staff etc etc. Finally, the shareholders want a return on investment, so we need a bit more to cover that.

In addition, not everything is sold at RRP - of course. How many times have you picked up a premium game for $55? How much did the retailer make then?

"And how much do movies cost to make? Many millions more than games do. And yet movies are still sold at around $20 or less."

You'd best stick to developing and not go into management. What did your last game sell? 500? 1M copies? So, that's $60M at retail, right?

Now think about what a successful movie generates in revenue (hint: potentially hundreds of millions, even leading into $1B) and they still have DVD and merchandising sales on top of that.