Dying to know what the game is you are prepared to risk this amount of money on?

Stores like EBGames, Walmart and Target only deal with large distributers. Unless you have a number of titles going out every year you will not get them to carry your game.

Also the money you are looking at is really in the millions. Dev costs, storage space, and shipping are only the first expenses. The next is shelf space. Getting Walmart to look at your game is only the first step. The next thing they will want is money for shelf space. If you want good shelf space it's going to cost big $$. Next they will want to see your marketing plan. If you're not planning on spending big money on tv or magazine ads then they will not take your game.

Back of the napking budget base on selling 100,000 copies of your game (which is a huge amount btw)

1. Cogs (DVDs, box, shrink wrap, etc.) ~ $3-5 a unit = ~$400,000
2. Shelf space ~ $2-3 a unit = ~$250,000
3. Minimum advertizing campaign to be taken serious ~= $500,000
4. Shipping, storage, infrastructure ~= $250,000

Grand guestimate : ~$1.5 million?

Quote: Original post by I_Smell_Tuna
These major chains have their own distribution centers. Go to any of their websites and they have job listings for their distribution centers under Careers. I'm also aware of marketing and what sells games.

That's right, but you'll have to convince the distributors to accept your game. From my understanding from how the business works, that will not be easy for a single small developer to do. And by "not easy", I mean on the scale of "for all intents and purposes, impossible".

Thinking this through from the point of view of a distributor, it is far better for them to talk to people like an agent from a big publisher like EA, where they can get dozens of titles that they know will sell, rather than deal with individual small companies that only offer one title that may or may not sell (from their perspective).

If you are serious about selling your title retail, you will need a publisher. They'll provide you with support that you will need, such as qualified staff who know how to deal with the big chains, legal representation, marketing, quality assurance and the like. There's just too much risk and work involved for a small company to deal with all of that themselves. If you want to sell your game entirely by yourself, I recommend selling on-line only.

Everyone: Why are you so pessimistic?

You guys didn't read my post clearly enough. These large chains have their own distribution centers, meaning they own them. I shouldn't be dealing with any third party distributors. Here are the number of distribution centers each chain has.

Wal-Mart 110
Target 29
Best Buy 8
EB Games 1
GameStop ?
Circuit City 1
KMart 18

This info comes directly from their websites. Why would there be any need to deal indirectly with these chains? It's not like there are generic video games like other products where a third party is required.

Also my accurate estimates backed by months of research put your 'guestimate' off by several hundred thousand dollars. You may be correct on your marketing/advertising costs, but your costs per unit is way off. A single unit can be produced for under a dollar. If you wanted to be cheap about it you could probably get away with making it for under seventy-five cents. And I doubt shelf space is that much, although I have nothing to back that up.

Please, stop dreaming and start to listen to these guys. They know what they are talking about. You don't.

You simply have no chance in hell to get onto Wal-Mart's shelves without a publisher.

I'd recommend that you publish your game online. At www.indiegamer.com is a forum filled with people with that kind of experience.

You just wont be able to buy any shelf space the big boys have it all tied up, EA isnt about to lose a foot of shelf space to allow you in, and Wal Mart arnt going to upset the big guys by restricting their space. You will have no proven track record which you could use to persuade them otherwise. Also you say you can manufacture a game for under a dollar, well maybe you could but its going to look cheap and you arnt going to convince anyone its a quality title in a cheap jewel case with a folded bit of paper as the manual. Listen to the guys like Dan (Obscure) who have been in the industry long enough to know. I myself have worked with Virgin, Sony, Ubisoft, Eidos so I have a little idea what the costs are.

I'm just wondering how many copies you'd need to sell to cover all those expenses. Just for development:
say 40 people working for 5 years at $50,000 per year = $10 million

if you can get away with 20 people working for 3 years that's still $3 million. Add to that other development costs and marketing and so on, and you get a pretty high sum. So how many units would you roughly need to sell to break even? You should probably also look for titles that managed to sell that much and compare their budgets to yours.

Bojan

Blah blah blah, I don't have the ambition of a successful businessman. People like you don't have my ambition, knowledge, ability, and resources to do what I want to do. These people don't know what they're talking about 'I'm not an expert...', they don't know me, or the situation, they're just regurgitating info they read somewhere on the internet, and talking about conventional methods.

I WILL get on Wal-Marts shelves and I won't settle for less.

I recommend that you follow one of your dreams and stick with it.

I'm not some bloated corporation, I'm a guy who is hiring freelance programmers, and artists. It will not costs millions, realisticly it will be less than $50k to develop.

Get a game made (or mostly made)before you worry about selling it. You're going to be in for a rude awakening in that step alone. You have to have a product to sell it.