According to EA boss John Riccitiello a Wii game typically costs EA as much as one quarter as much as a typical HD game.

" Secondly, development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game then it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game"

He then goes on to say that it isn't the fact that the typical Wii game is casual fair but simply due to art production and the lack of HD graphics on Wii

"and that is really a function of the capacity of the hardware and the fact that it is not a high-definition gaming box. So we are not producing, you know, the number of – the amount of art for high-definition games."

To put this into some perspective for people.. The combined sales of Dead Space on PS3 and 360 adds up to 1.49 Million copies according to VGChartz (PC sales not avaliable) 

If Dead Space cost EA 1/3 on Wii than it did on the HD formats then it only needs to sell 500,000 - 600,000 to make the same money back.

Source: http://seekingalpha.com/article/118325-electronic-arts-inc-f3q09-qtr-end-12-31-08-earnings-call-transcript?source=yahoo&page=9

Wow, so graphics do make the budget.

Actually, in the quote you provide he says that a Wii game can cost as much as one third of development costs for PS3 or Xbox 360 games.

Which you'll notice I took into consideration for in my needed sales for Dead Space..

Graphics up the cost significantly.

The only problem is, they got to busy with making things look pretty and completely forgot to give the gameplay department the same amount of attention.

That's like watching your fav porn with horrible acting.

Wait. Nevermind.

Yes, you certainly did. I just felt like pointing out that your lead line is inaccurate. Which you'll notice is the only part I quoted and commented on.

Just how much effort does it take to implement HD graphics these days? I assume they can do it very fast if they have the engine, and not require as much as 3 times the staff!

good work pufster, now we got some actual figures on Wii development cost.

Art costs a Hell of a lot of money.

Actually it has nothing to do with the engine at all. HD graphics are a level of resolution mixed with a per sqaure inch. A graphical render sees extremly little difference between a width of 320 vs a width 1200. It just has more pixels to fill. HD graphics are all about filling that space with detailed textures. The more the texture has to be spread out the more BLOCKY it looks. So a higher res texture is used to make it feel/look better. 

So changing the engine from SD to HD is matter of changing 1 line of code. Changing the graphical appearance from low fill texture to high fill textures requires a MUCH LARGER amount of manpower to create them. I should also note that the amount of ram(graphical + system) does determine how much texture space you can activly have.