Is there any reason why you would be in a position to argue what has risen in HD developement costs and why Groucho is wrong? Are you a game developer? Are you studying game developement? Or are you just a random person on a forum pretending to know something about something they've no real clue about nor have any real credentials to claim otherwise.

I've no idea about any of this graphical majarky but at the same time I've two friends who work in the industry (One at Bizarre and one formerly at Free Radical), who from what I've read would agree with Groucho, albeit I'm hardly the best person to get involved either with my complete lack of idea how this graphics stuff work.

The Last Remnant = Unreal Engine 3

Unreal Engine 3 = $1 Million to license

The Wii has "PS2 graphics" quality JRPGs because of its memory budget, not because of the "ease of making crap" for it, as you seem to think.  More like the difficulty of making something look good in 24MB of texture memory.  They only weren't as expensive as modern JRPGs because the devs weren't so ambitious, with regards to story, and presentation.

They're really arguing two seperate things ...

Groucho is (essentially) arguing that producing the same ammount of content at a higher level of detail doesn't require more work because the additional work required to add detail is offset by the ammount of work saved by not having to tweek the content to make it look good at a lower detail level.

Soriku is (essentially) arguing that what most people associate with "Better" graphics requires a lot of extra work because more content has to be created for every graphical asset, and you require more graphical assets.

They're both correct

 From what I've picked up, Groucho is arguing that what Soriku is saying is irrelevent though, as it's not the type of things that an RPG developement will focus on, as it's not the primary point, compared to something like an FPS.

 Yeah, I've not a clue, but it's still fun that I'm now arguing about who's right in another argument, or something like that.

That's just it though.  You don't need that stuff in JRPGs to look decent in real-time.  Heck a lot of excellent JRPGs from the last gen had pre-rendered backgrounds, despite having 3D characters.  Did that make them stink?

Because games like Lost Odyssey and Valkyria Chronicles have good looking gfx, doesn't put them on par with shooters, for development costs, for any of the same reasons, and it certainly doesn't imply that making them for the Wii would be "cheaper".

RPG dev costs are mostly in the scripting/level-design of the game, and the source art.  The engineering expenses, which is what makes games like shooters so expensive, just aren't as "present".  If the company sinks huge costs into superstar voice acting, motion capture for awesome cutscenes, etc, that costs big $$... but that stuff looks darn near the same in 480p as it does in 720p (its pre-rendered on CPU farms, many minutes per frame in some cases), and the sound... well its the same cost no matter what the destination hardware plays it back at.

In that case (FF XIII is a great example), that's due almost entirely to developer ambition, and not the platform at all.

ya, I pretty much agree with this.

the Wii has some RPGs, tons of upcoming ones, which hopefully will do really well (we already know DQX and MH3 will do great,) the Wii is the console for platformers, it has a lot of SIM games, racing, party, etc, its just missing, IMO, shooters and action.

NMH is prolly one of my favorite action games of all time... and we have the upcoming MadWorld... so.

the Wii has the great games, just not the audience. yet.

I think what you're getting at is that the "ambition bar" for HD platforms is higher than it is for the Wii.

I totally agree, but that really has nothing to do with the platforms, per se.  The difference in cost is not anywhere near as great for the JRPG subgenre as it is for a shooter.  That's my point.  

You can be ambitious with extraneous stuff (like awesome cutscenes and voice), but that costs the same.  Its only the engineering and art expenses that factor in, relative to the platform, here, and I'm saying that the art is actually cheaper since JRPGs don't usually require the artists to make normal maps, bump maps, etc.  The engineering, however, can be as expensive, or cheap, as the publisher wants it to be -- pretty silly for a JRPG, but it does happen -- and I suppose that's where the "3rd parties are dumb" comments must come from?

I'm just saying that, typically, the dev cost differences between Wii and HD JRPGs are not typically as great as they are between Wii and HD shooters, sports titles, etc.  That's all I'm saying.  

The Wii is still very attractive as a JRPG platform to the 3rd parties -- again, because the engineering requirements are much less (a huge part of the dev expense, that is).  Sure the games cost about the same as the HD versions, but you get a LOT more bids for making them (from cheap, low-tech studios).

The publishers can cherry-pick the good candidates and roll with them, for JRPGs.  They can up the quality bar merely by the selection process.  And most JRPG pitches... well they come from little Japanese studios who are eyeing the Japanese demographic, and frankly don't have much of a clue as to what would draw a western gamer into their game.

only xbox 360 gives 3rd party publishers the platform they need to visualize their artistic and realistic needs. The Xbox 360 has been incredibly successful in attracting new audiences and demographics to its revolutionary platform with a wide array of new titles which appeal to the casual demographic and its Xbox LIVE online platform continuing to be at the forefront of innovative technology and vision.