On September 1st, 2015, “Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain”, the hotly anticipated fifth (well, actually seventh without counting the spin-offs, but who cares) instalment of the highly popular “Metal Gear” saga was finally released to much ovation. Critics and fans loved it, with the PS4 version getting a 93 on Metacritic (which was actually 2 points higher closer to release). Its stellar presentation and fantastic open world that lets you tackle missions in any way you see fit quickly made people call it the best stealth game ever made. Game director Hideo Kojima openly called it his “magnum opus” and the game he wanted to make back when the series started on the obscure Japanese home computer MSX2 back in 1987. By all accounts, it’s a resounding success… Or is it?

Sadly, the answer appears to lean more towards no. As Forbes reported, as of September 6th 2015 (about a week after its release) “The Phantom Pain” has only sold about 3 million units across all five systems that it was released for, which might sound like a great number at first (not a lot of games manage to sell even one million unit) until you examine the numbers a bit more closely. The game has been in development for five years – seven if you count the creation of the revolutionary engine it runs on. During that time, it has accumulated a development budget of over $80 million, and considering the fact that the game was heavily marketed, making an appearance on every single major gaming event for the past 3 years (such as E3, Tokyo Game Show, Gamescom and others), we can safely assume that the marketing budget was at least $50 million (getting a booth at E3 isn’t cheap at all, and this game had three – more than any other I can think of).

An average copy of the game costs $60, but considering the fact that retail stores, manufacturers and console owners (Sony and Microsoft) are each taking their cut, only about half of that money ends up in the publisher’s hands, meaning that in its first week of release (the most important one for any new title) “The Phantom Pain” only made about $90 million – enough to cover the development budget for sure, but not nearly enough to pay for the marketing, let alone turn in profit. Just for comparison, “Metal Gear Solid 4” sold about 6 million copies while costing a fraction of the budget and only being on one platform (PlayStation 3) as opposed to MGSV’s 5. Not to mention, being a console exclusive on Sony’s platform meant that they shouldered a good chunk of the marketing costs, making the development even cheaper. In an industry where a game that sells 3.4 million copies can still be considered a financial failure, it’s seeming increasingly more likely that “Metal Gear Solid V” will be deemed a failure by publisher Konami.

Considering the fact that the engine and a whole lot of assets have already been created, Konami can easily make more “Metal Gear” games on the cheap despite series creator Hideo Kojima’s highly publicized departure from the company. However, if “Metal Gear Solid V” underperforms, Konami might choose to abandon the franchise altogether, at least on consoles, and instead focus exclusively on mobile games and pachinko/slot machines. Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa has already stated that “[Konami’s] main platform will be mobiles”, so it’s rather easy to see “The Phantom Pain”’s disappointing sales as yet another sign that the company should back off from major releases entirely. With that said, one has to ask if the future of this beloved franchise is in trouble.