Groucho said:
This was the case long before the Wii even existed. I would wager that the Wii actually makes the problem worse -- you can't risk large dev costs on the Wii with so much shovelware competition and an untargetable (i.e. general) audience, but at the same time, it takes a reasonably large cost to create a decent game in the first place. If 3rd parties actually do up the Wii budgets from the 25-50% of the HD budgets that they are now, their risk will go up even moreso. 25%-50% budget for Wii titles doesn't mean they are the same quality of title as a typical HD title. A shovelware game on the Wii costs 25% what a AAA game on a HD console might take, but the potential profit margins are not necessarily better (yet). Publishers have been playing this ugly gambling game since the mid-90s. 30% is actually an improvement over what it was then. Its the blockbusters that make money and save publishing companies -- hence the increasing budgets of games over the years, and the willingness to risk more, while upping the bar and bringing the games industry to its current state. |
Publishers have been claiming that it costs 1/4 to 1/2 the cost of a HD game to make a similar Wii game ... Basically, it would a game that cost $100 Million to develop (like Grand Theft Auto 4 or Metal Gear Solid 4) would probably cost in the range of $25 Million to develop for the Wii
Shovelware is drastically less expensive to produce than an AAA game, and most shovelware games will sit with tiny budgets ($500,000 to $1 Million I would expect) because they're designed to be profitable off of the initial sales to retailers.
