Only 30% of games recover their development costs!?

[HappySqurriel]

Words Of Wisdom said:

HappySqurriel said:

Since you seem to be the uninformed one, why don't you look at the dozens of interviews with third party publishers which have claimed that HD games cost 2 to 4 times as much as Wii games.

What people don't seem to get is that it takes far longer to produce the highly detailed models and textures that are required in HD games (and you need to create additional textures in order to apply the material effects), and you require far more of these objects and textures because the high detailed environments look sparse without being more heavily populated. When you combine these factors it explains why so many HD games cost so much more to develop while still having much shorter campaigns with less gameplay modes than similar games of the previous generation.

This is self-evident really.  If you want higher quality, you will have to pay more for it.

The important thing to realize is that the game costs more to make because the bar of quality you're shooting for on one platform is higher than that of another, not because of costs inherent to the platform itself. 

To put that a bit differently, making a game that is visually identical on the Wii and 360 would have comparable costs.  The 360 version would not magically become 2 to 4 times more expensive simply due to being on the 360.

True enough, but being that the primary reason for buying a PS3 or XBox 360 is graphical capabilities I'm pretty certain that most games that looked like Wii games would be rejected by their userbase if they weren't budget titles or PSN/XLA games.