....Considering the scope of Shenmue, I don't think it's exactly a fair comparison.

Look, let's not be disingenuous, here. When Capcom says Zack and Wiki "didn't make money", that can be interpreted in a lot of ways - the softest of which is simply that the profit margin it made wasn't high enough. The same would be true of Viewtiful Joe. That series made money technically, it's why they kept making games for it, but they killed it off because their return on investment was not high enough.

The article ends with a possibility of more Zack and Wiki type projects, so the likelihood that it actually lost money in the context of that conversation is very small.

Its also a different perspective -> Developer (Gears of War) vs Publisher (Z+W) so you've got the advertising and distribution costs to go on top of that as well.

Shipping for example is very expensive, if it costs $5 to ship 3 games to a retail store it may only cost $10 to ship 30. So for example the distribution model on a Wii game is more costly than Gears of War due to the sheer difference in the number of sales and how the bulk of sales are distributed over time.

Also consider there are many more Wii releases than Xbox 360 releases, therefore it costs more money in terms of "market positioning" with retailers to keep the game on the shelves and keep it in a good position for sales especially for an item which doesn't have the sheer turnover compared to say a Nintendo or new release HD game of the likes of say Gears of War.

I would say the game broke even and established for Capcom a reasonable Wii series which will be easier and more productive to sell the next time around. They have more than broken even if you consider franchise value but they may not have done much more than break even in an absolutist sense of the concept.

I don't know about how this reflects on the Industry, but I would say publishers understand the true cost of development better than developers. Thats not too bad for a niche game on the Wii and I see this as more a reflection on the continued market development on the Wii and the shovelware titles will get crowded out eventually and these titles will get their dues eventually.

@Khuutra

I think I will stick with what capcom said. Z&W did not make money.

You are not actually arguing with me, you are just insisting on one pedantic interpretation of those words that ignores context.

Of course not, but it's just funny that nearly everyone assumes the profit on Wii is easy as A-B-C.

@ NJ5

And I think you need to factor in the purchase price that many of these copies were bought at. (less than $20) I bought mine at Toys R Us for $10. It's kinda hard for the publisher to get that much if it's only sold for $10-20.

You are a bright kid. You can of course have your own conclusions of what Capcom said. I have mine. :)

Nice read. It's good to see that Capcom will keep making multiplat games. He raised some pretty good points, and reminded me why Capcom is so awesome. With that said, it seems like their multiplat strategy should at the very least include SF2 HD on Wii Ware, as I'm sure many people would go for that. A Wii-exlusive RE5 side game would be a welcome addition as well. Dead Rising should have been ported to ps3, but getting the second is good as well.

Nothing he said gave me any confidence whatsoever that Dead Rising Wii will actually be a good game. It's pretty obvious from his PR spin that this is a watered down version of Dead Rising for x360.

Capcom does not stick to a formula once burned. The fact that they even hint at the possibility of more games like Zack and Wiki indicates that it didn't lose money.

People. You're all missing the point.
The guy clearly was saying, "Z&W and Okami didn't make money (like the Mario games)."