| Erik Aston said: I don't think development costs are the whole story here. To complete the picture you have to take into account Marketing/Testing/Publishing costs. Its been stated previously that the Wii required as much if not more advertising as the HD consoles by an Ubisoft executive due to the "More fragmented userbase" 1. I think they just don't know how to market to Wii's userbase. Nintendo can sell 5, 10 and 15 million copies of games on Wii, which suggests there are large groups of people looking for something similar. Ubisoft, and most third parties, just doesn't know how to reach them. (They also aren't getting a boost by Nintendo co-marketing their top games.) Hasn't enough credible research come out which shows that the majority of the current Wii population owned a console last generation? The market research doesn't back up the "expanded market" theories that I've seen. 2. Not really. The only thing I recall is the NPD report that was misinterpreted as being based on their console sell-through figures, when it was really based on a seperate survey on what is "installed." Even then, that won't tell the whole story, as Nintendo's internal research has suggested that far more people-per-household play Wii, which I think is supported by the types of games which are selling. |
1. I think the issue is that Nintendos marketing budget is 5,10,15* greater or equivelent if you consider the effectiveness of marketing one of the best known gaming icons. Marketing is expensive - especically considering the lower relative development costs of HD consoles vs the Wii. $10,000,000 doesn't sound too bad next to a $20,000,000 game but try to pass those numbers through accounting if you want to market a $6,000,000 Wii game. So maybe they do have to spend that kind of money to market their games, but publishers believe it or not are actually quite conservative so I doubt they would want to spend 150% more on marketing than development unless they see a clear payoff for the investment.
2. I agree that the market survey didn't tell the whole story, however does that suggest that the "expanded" market is really based mostly around drawing more people per installed household to the console? So essentially its about increasing console participation? It doesn't actually disprove that most Wii owners owned a console previously (These people are more likely to own a console anyway) But indicates that theres perhaps more to the statistics than indicated. This means that WiiFit is selling mainly to current Wii owners as an "expanded participation" type market. If market sales are bredth then household participation would be depth of the whole market penetration picture. It does make sense in a lot of ways, Wii software sales in the E.U are radical.
Tease.
