Infinity Ward produces their Call of Duty games in 2 years, Epic developed Gears of War 2 in 2 years, and Insomniac developed Resitance 2 in 2 years, so why would a similar timeframe for The Conduit be so bad?

2 years for The Conduit 2 seems perfectly reasonable.

I find it difficult to believe that a game like Resistance began development more than 2 years before the PS3 launched being that the vast majority of launch games are started 12 to 18 months before a console is released ... It wasn't that uncommon for similar games to be developed with excellent results in under 18 months on previous generation consoles, so why is 2 years such a death sentence?

Seriously, you should stop talking on occassion if you want people to believe your facade about being a game developer ...

Wow, this was actually the first thread I've read on this site that hit on so many bases that trying to summarize and conclude to anything is leaving me exhausted - 5 pages of squabbling and reckoning it's almost amazing if it wasn't sad. =(

What some people here are assuming or are putting off confuses me as well, I must be easily confused tonight. V_V

First off I'd like to say that HD games are ruining this industry, then on the other had wagglfied ports and innovative shovelware are also responsible for 99% of the growth that's resulting in the death of this industry.

So how to explain: I'm not one for star wars but let's it helps to cut to the chase.

First the HD Side: On this side theirs the PC/PS3/Xbox360 all of which support next gen console interfaces that promise to be a console but look like a home media hub, the games on them are expensive as hell to make but if it's a hit can send revenue through the roof and yield profitability just with a lower margin for profit (Less control over when profit is obtained on the part of the pub/dev). A hit on this end would clearly be Call of Duty 4, a miss on this end would be The Bourne Conspiracy (the developers were basically fired).

The Wii: This side consists of Wii/PC all of which support multimedia functions and are easly accesible. These systes support a multimedia interface while promising to be a gaming console, In the end similarly to above PC consumes this space while Wii has to be illegally modified to occupy this space; "this" being the media hub space. The games on this aren't cheap either I'm sure the average Joe can't find 2-10 million dollars in their pocket to make one of these games, however the games aren't nearly as expensive as HD games as they cost 1/3 to 1/4 (1/5) the cost of an HD game, this means a game like: Cooking Mama could be a hit and No More Heroes could be a miss, but No More Heroes could/will see a sequal. The games have a higher profit margin.

Ambitios Projects: So Shenmu is being made for the PC/PS3/Xbox360 with those respective systems as a minimum, a random number would be added by myself, so lets say the game costs 120 million dollars to develop, now lets say that lower end PC/Wii was to see Shenmu in a totally unrelated case, this game could cost from 30~40 million to develop is all he's saying. V_V

This is no longer disputable, I don't understand why there are 5 pages disputing something that is now on record.

It depends on whos doing the talking.

If you ask a publisher how much it costs to bring a Wii game to the market they may say "$15M"

If you ask a developer how much it costs to make a Wii game they may say "$8M"

Now they could be both talking about the same game and yet both are correct.

When a developer is quoted he'd be talking about the total expense of making a game so thats pretty much every cost up until the point a gold disk is created. However publishing costs are a significant expense and should not be underestimated.

When we aren't given a development cost straight up, its possible to estimate it based from head count @100k each plus a little extra to cover incidental expenses and third party companies/technologies contracted in.

I hearby invoke Godwins Law.

so does it mean you agree that games with similar scale would cost a lot more to develope on HD consoles than Wii?

I just want to see it come to a conclusion after all the arguements everyone put in. Right now it's like watching a movie without an ending.

And in the first sentence of the OP, it says that it's the boss of EA, which is most certainly a publisher.

In that instance he was only quoting development costs.

Wow, the semantics is still going on huh? Again, I still don't see how there is even an argument here.