Task 4 Financial Planning

Financial planning is very important in the gaming industry or any industry for a fact. The reason it is important is because in the gaming industry the goal is always to make profit. In the process of one selling their game to the public to make money comes the very important process of developing process. Without this the game would not be in existence and left a mere idea. Depending on how much budget one has, what softwares they plan on use, the people they hire and the time set to finish the project by, this can be very costly. As we know, there are many different skills and professions in the industry required to undertake the process of developing a game and making it available for the public to purchase or/and access. While planning the finance of the over all process of ultimately selling the game, all these professions are seen as numbers and their level of skill. For example, one must choose a project manager, digital artist, programmer etc to get the product made but in the search of finding one best for you, you're bound to have options to pick from. One developer might be more skilled than the other one however he/she might come with a greater cost. After deciding who to hire and how much they get, you're done for that part of financial planning. 
To ensure the best chances of you making profit and not going into loss, you must create a budget.Your budget is broken into 3 sectors, variable costs, fixed costs and break even point. To make the best estimations and predictions for your sales and profit, it is compulsary that you know which one out of the two, variable cost or fixed cost applies to you. 
Variable costs are things you buy for your product to make it purchasable. Depending on your product and how big/costly the get it packaged and ready for sale process is, the variable cost can be expensive. But in most cases it is relatively cheap. For example, a bread factory has to put the slices of bread in packaging and deliver them to stores for sale. The money gone into doing so is called a variable cost.
On the other hand fixed costs are costs that are not variable, these help sellers to make estimations of profit etc easily by taking out the risk of the costs of things like packaging changing. Online stores like Steam, Apple app store and Android playstore use fixed cost because they do not have to package the product or deliver it instead just make the file accessable and downloadable after the customer has bought the app.  Just like it's name, fixed costs are fixed which makes estimations easier to make and a little more reliable and realistic.
Though it seems as easy as either making profit or losing it, there is another form of calculating such progress. It is known as the 'break even point'. The break even point in simple words is having made the same ammount of money you spent on delveloping or making it. For example if I made a game that took £10,000 to develop, the break even point would be when I make back 10,000 exactly by selling whatever ammount of copies it would take. In other words, variable costs and fixed cost reaching the same number resulting in neither loss or profit gives you the break even point. 
The financial planning process is very important in every serious and well organised business, project or task. One could argue it is one the most important processes, others would disagree and say it is not so important. I think it is neither essential nor useless. I think every business, company or project that is very well organised and knows what to do and how to achieve their goals will definitely go through this process.