Over the past couple years I read a few developers state that, to make a similar game on either console, development costs on the Wii are about 1/3 (33%) the costs of a PS360 game.  Thing is, Wii games sell for $50 whereas PS360 games go for $60, that's 5/6 (83%) the price of PS360 games. 

Now, I know a lot of Developers and Publishers are going bankrupt / suffering net losses making games for PS360 but I still feel Wii owners are getting short changed here.  I'm not saying sell the games for 1/3 the price, but would something like $30, 50% the price of PS360 games be more fair towards Wii owners?

What are your thoughts on this matter?

I don't think it works that neatly for game publishing, in that i don't think that a game's retail costs are often directly proportional to their development costs. You have budget games, of course, for all platforms, but a lot more goes into that $50 you're gonna pay for MadWorld than just development costs

Either way, applying that theory of thought, wouldn't we have paid $75 for GTAIV? It had an astronomical budget after all

Hes got a point. Look at games like Force Unleashed on PS2 selling for much less than the Wii version. I also think if prices were dropped the charts wouldn't look like shit with titles like Big Beach Sports selling so many copies.

DR is going for 40$ retail. Maybe some games are better off being a bit cheaper.

I think there needs to be rethink about Wii pricing, especially for 3rd parties. If theyre cheaper, granted less profit of individual titles but, they will sell many more copies of the better games.

See this is not a problem the Wii should be fixing.

The Wii costs more to develop for than the past generation consoles (at least it does on the handful of games devs make an effort for) and it has the same game price as last gen.
The problem is not the Wii game prices, the problem is the dev costs for making a HD game.



None of this is fact, I am just guessing numbers here... but some may be close due to logic and memory.
(someone will need to confirm game prices as I have no idea what past gen games were in $)

Generation / average dev cost / game prices

NES gen / $50k / $50

SNES gen / $150k / $50

PS1 gen / $800k / $50

PS2 gen / $2 mil / $50

HD twins / $12 mil / $60  OR  Wii / $4mil / $50


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I think the devs are the ones being shafted by us, the extra $10 was nothing in comparison to how much more the games cost to make now than they used to.

That's a very oversimplified view of the matter

Firstly, Wii games are about the same level of difficulty as PS2/GC/xbox games, hence Wii games are priced at $50

Developers are making good profits on Wii games, hence the $50 is validated

The PS360 games are $10 more because of higher development costs
Developers are going broke due to the development costs of PS360 games

Therefore the $60 price is the problem, and 3 options are available

Raise PS360 games to $70 to get more money per sale
Drop PS360 games to $50 to get more sales
Stop making big budget PS360 games

Considering how many publishers are struggling even at our current pricing plan, I don't mind paying the fifty too much. If anything, I'd say HD games are vastly unerpriced (and the financial reports show it).

That said, some games are clearly not worth fifty bucks. Fortunately, those tend to drop pretty quickly, so with a bit of patience you can snag a game at the appropriate price.

@noname, depends of course on the publisher. ZW took way too long and Okami is still ridiculous.

@scottie & twroo

Shouldn't Wii games costs less than ps2/gamecube games if they put about the same amount of effort? I mean, the technology has been out for many years now + more efficient tech is now available.

No... they shouldn't

The coding is not the expensive part of making the game, and the only thing what you are saying affects is how easy it is to code on the Wii compared to PS2 (which was a bitch, but everyone was forced to get used to it) and GC (which the Wii is similar to, so those that knew how to work the GC should be able to easily work with the Wii)

The money is spent mostly on things that have nothing to do with which console it is on. (Except that it has to "fit" onto that console of course)