How much does it cost EA to make a pack?

(A normal wage/month *100-200 people) * 6-12 months should give you a rough estimate. I assume that around 100-200 people are making these packs (at least that's the amount if people involved according to credits) and them making a pack like this should take something between 6 months to a year.

If we say this pack took a year and was made by 100 people, and for simplicity, all people have a yearly wage of 24,000 USD (lowest average in the US), then this cost them at least 2400000 USD in salaries. In order to cover that, their packs would have to sell 120300 copies. (1 copy costs about 19.99 USD I believe)

And that's with the lowest average wage, not counting any other costs. Raise the wages to something like 60,000 USD and they need to sell over 300000 copies. And according to their credits they are around 200 people (but I am not counting all of them because they work on other things as well).

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not living in the US so I could have calculated something wrong here.

I don't think they will have any problem selling 300 000 copies of the Star War pack, however due to the negative backlash they might not get their money back as fast as they wanted.

I personally don't think they will lose any money on it.

Do I think it will be the "best selling" pack? .... No.

• People are buying it just for build/buy and CAS
  
• People are buying it because they are a completionist
  
• People are buying it out of curiosity
  
• People who said they wouldn't buy it, actually bought it
  
• SW fans for sure will want to check it out or just buy it because they collect SW memorabilia even if they don't actually play
  
• Those that wanted SW in the game or like the pack and theme will be buying it as well
  

So they won't lose money on it.

This star wars pack is going to be TS4's best selling pack...

"Chicklet453681;c-17657197" wrote:
I personally don't think they will lose any money on it.

Do I think it will be the "best selling" pack? .... No.

• People are buying it just for build/buy and CAS
  
• People are buying it because they are a completionist
  
• People are buying it out of curiosity
  
• People who said they wouldn't buy it, actually bought it
  
• SW fans for sure will want to check it out or just buy it because they collect SW memorabilia even if they don't actually play
  
• Those that wanted SW in the game or like the pack and theme will be buying it as well
  

So they won't lose money on it.

Honestly, I would unfortunately fall under the 4 reasons under that list. So far I have not yet but I like the idea of having my stories/gameplay dictate when I use new packs. While there are some items I would want (SciFi BB, some CAS) I'm not a SW fan and it seems so specific that the odds of me getting it seem super slim.

I try to look for the good in all these packs but I can definitely say that they won't lose money with this one.

It definitely costs a lot less to make than they make from it. They push out $120 worth of content every single year and thousands of people buy every single thing. Other franchises charge $50 for a full blown game every two years so the Sims definitely makes a lot more than other games. Even if they were to lose out with one pack (which I don't think they ever do), others would make easily enough to make up for it.

Sims YouTubers get around 400k+ views regularly and on a lot of videos they get a million plus so there's definitely a very big player base. I think a lot of people forget that most players are not active in sims social platforms so you can't necessarily estimate pack sales from online opinion. Angry people are usually louder than contempt ones

"logion;c-17656946" wrote:
(A normal wage/month *100-200 people) * 6-12 months should give you a rough estimate. I assume that around 100-200 people are making these packs (at least that's the amount if people involved according to credits) and them making a pack like this should take something between 6 months to a year.

If we say this pack took a year and was made by 100 people, and for simplicity, all people have a yearly wage of 24,000 USD (lowest average in the US), then this cost them at least 2400000 USD in salaries. In order to cover that, their packs would have to sell 120300 copies. (1 copy costs about 19.99 USD I believe).

The average salary for a dev working at EA is 86,000 a year. Other costs in game development are sound engineers, artists, designers, etc., which are typically in the range of 70k. And we can't forget the costs of marketing hardware maintenance, the actual running costs of the space, insurance, etc. So by those calculations we're looking at maybe $10 million to make an expansion?

In which case they would need to sell 300-400k copies to break even. I know that they say TS4 has 20 million unique players, but that doesn't necessarily tell the whole story about their player base. Plus, it was bad sales that shut down Maxis in the first place (not saying that would happen over a game pack).

"CopperBolt;c-17657426" wrote:

"logion;c-17656946" wrote:
(A normal wage/month *100-200 people) * 6-12 months should give you a rough estimate. I assume that around 100-200 people are making these packs (at least that's the amount if people involved according to credits) and them making a pack like this should take something between 6 months to a year.

If we say this pack took a year and was made by 100 people, and for simplicity, all people have a yearly wage of 24,000 USD (lowest average in the US), then this cost them at least 2400000 USD in salaries. In order to cover that, their packs would have to sell 120300 copies. (1 copy costs about 19.99 USD I believe).

The average salary for a dev working at EA is 86,000 a year. Other costs in game development are sound engineers, artists, designers, etc., which are typically in the range of 70k. And we can't forget the costs of marketing hardware maintenance, the actual running costs of the space, insurance, etc. So by those calculations we're looking at maybe $10 million to make an expansion?

In which case they would need to sell 300-400k copies to break even. I know that they say TS4 has 20 million unique players, but that doesn't necessarily tell the whole story about their player base. Plus, it was bad sales that shut down Maxis in the first place (not saying that would happen over a game pack).

Yeah, good estimate.

That 20 million unique players statement is since the game launched though, since 2014. So during 6 years 20 million people have started the game and closed it at least once.

There are still a lot of people still playing this game though, I think they claimed around EA play that they have around 10 million active players per month. They have seen a huge increase during the pandemic.