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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Wii game budgets 1/4 of HD budgets according to EA

NinjaKido on 06 February 2009
Arius Dion said:
Wow, the semantics is still going on huh? Again, I still don't see how there is even an argument here.

 

Shh ! let the kids fight ... it's fun :).



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Arius Dion on 06 February 2009

:)



Bet between Slimbeast and Arius Dion about Wii sales 2009:


If the Wii sells less than 20 million in 2009 (as defined by VGC sales between week ending 3d Jan 2009 to week ending 4th Jan 2010) Slimebeast wins and get to control Arius Dion's sig for 1 month.

If the Wii sells more than 20 million in 2009 (as defined above) Arius Dion wins and gets to control Slimebeast's sig for 1 month.

puffy on 06 February 2009
Groucho said:
averyblund said:
theRepublic said:
Let's look at it in an apples to apples comparison:

Killzone 2 is an exclusive FPS for the PS3. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. Its development costs are rumored to be $60 million.

The Conduit is an exclusive FPS for the Wii. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. I can't find anything on its development costs. Does anyone think it even comes close to $60 million?

 

8 million tops, I would bet more like 3-4. SMG was being developed for years by some of the top programmers in the world and only cost 15 or so.

3-4M for the Conduit?  You realize that 100K/employee/year is the standard, right?  15-20 employees for 2 years then on the Conduit? And of course they get their motion capture, etc. for free, right?  Mocap studios love giving time for free.

Lets use GTA4 again as an example, while we're at it.  Most of that $100M... voice acting, actor mocap, licensing.  If you can't deduce it on your own, those expenses have nothing to do with platform-specific development, per se, and everything to do with ambition.  GTA4 on the Wii probably would have cost $85-90M, at the least, given the same grade of resources.

Production value == cost.  It has nothing to do with platform, and everything to do with project ambition.   That's the last time I'll say it.

 

 

I'd just like to point out that High Voltage Software owns a Mocap studio so scratch those costs.



 

Squilliam on 06 February 2009

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
PLZ OPEN FILE "LOLCATS.TXT"?
    AWSUM THX
        VISIBLE FILE
    O NOES
        INVISIBLE "ERROR!"
KTHXBYE

This is a Wii coding example, as you can see no serious developer would ever work on the system which is why only funny Japanese people like Miyamoto take the system seriously.



Tease.

megaman79 on 06 February 2009
puffy said:
Groucho said:
averyblund said:
theRepublic said:
Let's look at it in an apples to apples comparison:

Killzone 2 is an exclusive FPS for the PS3. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. Its development costs are rumored to be $60 million.

The Conduit is an exclusive FPS for the Wii. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. I can't find anything on its development costs. Does anyone think it even comes close to $60 million?

 

8 million tops, I would bet more like 3-4. SMG was being developed for years by some of the top programmers in the world and only cost 15 or so.

3-4M for the Conduit? You realize that 100K/employee/year is the standard, right? 15-20 employees for 2 years then on the Conduit? And of course they get their motion capture, etc. for free, right? Mocap studios love giving time for free.

Lets use GTA4 again as an example, while we're at it. Most of that $100M... voice acting, actor mocap, licensing. If you can't deduce it on your own, those expenses have nothing to do with platform-specific development, per se, and everything to do with ambition. GTA4 on the Wii probably would have cost $85-90M, at the least, given the same grade of resources.

Production value == cost. It has nothing to do with platform, and everything to do with project ambition. That's the last time I'll say it.

 

 

I'd just like to point out that High Voltage Software owns a Mocap studio so scratch those costs.

 

Puffy, You created a monster here lol. This thread could go to 10 pages

So if HVS has got a mocap studio (or green screen whatever setup) most other larger companies would have them.



“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.

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ElRhodeo on 06 February 2009

Isn't it funny that developers did NOT focus on the Wii straight away? They should have, if developing costs are indeed 1/3 or 1/4, no?

For developers, the Wii being SD / Low tech is one of it's advantages AND problems at the same time:
- An advantage because development costs are lower.
- A problem, because in a generation where bombastic HD visuals exist, it's hard to impress customers with a worse looking effort. Like, there's no way back. That's especially true for genres like first person shooters, whose fans are incredibly graphics-fixated. Just think of the hundreds of 360/PS3 graphics comparison threads... Better shadows in Killzone, better organic matter in Gears, sharper textures in Resistance, better lighting in Halo. Developers know they won't impress that audience with a Wii shooter, no matter how hard they try.

Difficult situation. No wonder that game developers hate the Wii... video game market evolution used to be straight and simple: Next gen, similar games, better technology. Bigger.
The Wii is an anomaly. What should studios do? Make Wii the lead platform for their FPS'? It won't work. Sure, the Conduit will do fine, but not among HD shooter fans.



Currently playing: NSMB (Wii) 

Waiting for: Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii), The Last Story (Wii), Golden Sun (DS), Portal 2 (Wii? or OSX), Metroid: Other M (Wii), 
... and of course Zelda (Wii) 
--OkeyDokey-- on 06 February 2009
Squilliam said:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
PLZ OPEN FILE "LOLCATS.TXT"?
    AWSUM THX
        VISIBLE FILE
    O NOES
        INVISIBLE "ERROR!"
KTHXBYE

This is a Wii coding example, as you can see no serious developer would ever work on the system which is why only funny Japanese people like Miyamoto take the system seriously.

LMAO.



puffy on 06 February 2009
megaman79 said:
puffy said:
Groucho said:
averyblund said:
theRepublic said:
Let's look at it in an apples to apples comparison:

Killzone 2 is an exclusive FPS for the PS3. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. Its development costs are rumored to be $60 million.

The Conduit is an exclusive FPS for the Wii. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. I can't find anything on its development costs. Does anyone think it even comes close to $60 million?

 

8 million tops, I would bet more like 3-4. SMG was being developed for years by some of the top programmers in the world and only cost 15 or so.

3-4M for the Conduit? You realize that 100K/employee/year is the standard, right? 15-20 employees for 2 years then on the Conduit? And of course they get their motion capture, etc. for free, right? Mocap studios love giving time for free.

Lets use GTA4 again as an example, while we're at it. Most of that $100M... voice acting, actor mocap, licensing. If you can't deduce it on your own, those expenses have nothing to do with platform-specific development, per se, and everything to do with ambition. GTA4 on the Wii probably would have cost $85-90M, at the least, given the same grade of resources.

Production value == cost. It has nothing to do with platform, and everything to do with project ambition. That's the last time I'll say it.

 

 

I'd just like to point out that High Voltage Software owns a Mocap studio so scratch those costs.

 

Puffy, You created a monster here lol. This thread could go to 10 pages

So if HVS has got a mocap studio (or green screen whatever setup) most other larger companies would have them.

LOL yes I did.. It's been fun to watch some posters being douches and even better seeing them being put in their place by solid arguments.

I'm glad people have really thought about development in context of the big picture in this thread.. I brought the raw dev figures and others have said 'hold on, what about marketing and distribution? The maths only accounts for the break even point, what about after that?'

 

One more point I'd like to raise is that I believe the Wii will have HD game-like sales if the extra money is put into advertising, make a $6 million game on Wii and back it up with a $10 million marketing campaign. Think I'm crazy?

EA are spending $10 million on marketing EA Sports Active and I doubt it would have cost them more than $6 million to develop, it'd mostly be R&D costs like market research not art assets - look at Wii Fit's art assets for example.

The Wii market needs marketing for any meaningful spending to occur and I think once developers up the average budget to around $10 million and back it up with an advertising campaign between $5 and $10 million, then we'll see some third party success

 



 

MaxwellGT2000 on 06 February 2009
HappySqurriel said:
Groucho said:
HappySqurriel said:

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 ...

 

This made me LOL, as well as this whole entertaining thread. 

To recap the score Happy, Kazs, NJ5, etc = 40 logical points

Groucho and a couple of others = 1 illogical point that keeps getting trampled, pressed, killed, and the people stating such points are just retracting.

Yeah the shorter development time of Resistance 1 is shown by how average it looked and played and gameplay wise some things were unacceptable last gen, haven't had a chance to play it yet but the longer development time of Resistance 2 seemed to have made a good shooter, nothing amazing but a very solid game, and would probably be were your average time should be alloted for a good shooter to be made this gen vs last, which on topic extra time = extra money :)



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Sullla on 06 February 2009
Groucho said:

3-4M for the Conduit?  You realize that 100K/employee/year is the standard, right?  15-20 employees for 2 years then on the Conduit?  And of course they get their motion capture, etc. for free, right?  Mocap studios love giving time for free.

Lets use GTA4 again as an example, while we're at it.  Most of that $100M... voice acting, actor mocap, licensing.  If you can't deduce it on your own, those expenses have nothing to do with platform-specific development, per se, and everything to do with ambition.  GTA4 on the Wii probably would have cost $85-90M, at the least, given the same grade of resources.

I enjoyed this little blurb. No offense to Groucho, but this is simply preposterous.



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End of 2008 totals: Wii 42m, 360 24m, PS3 18.5m (made Jan. 4, 2008)