Next-Gen Development Costs

[mrstickball]

Can we get a diffinitive post on the actual expinses of next-gen gaming? Everyone states the Wii is cheaper to dev for, and I am sure it is. However, we've never seen any hard facts. I've found the development costs for a few games: Alan Wake: $8+ million USD (per the AW forums) Killzone 2: $20 million USD Red Steel: $12 million USD Blue Dragon: $25 million USD Gears of War: $10 million USD (confirmed price from Epic) Lost Planet: $20 million USD + $20 million in marketing (confirmed, wow on marketing) http://www.joystiq.com/2007/02/03/lost-planet-lost-40-million-to-find-success Halo 3: $25 million USD+ (H2 was around $25m) Also, a computer sci blog writer quoted various industry reports stating the 360 cost an average $15m to dev for (and taking 21 months), and the PS3 costing an average of $20m (similar to the Namco numbers), and taking 24 months. http://compsci.ca/blog/profitability-in-video-game-industry/ However, despite these price tags, old(er) games such as Shemmune was $20m+, FFXII was $35m, Halo 2 was $25m. Can anyone else here provide some insight on other next-gen game's budgets? Reason I ask is this: If you make a Wii game, your looking at around $30 "profit" per $50 game ($20 going to Nintendo, packaging, and the retailer). On the 360/PS3, your looking at around $35-$38 or even $40 "profit" per game (again, around $20 going to retailers/MS/packaging) Now, Namco said that it would take around 500k copies of sales to make 1 game profitable. At $35, we're looking at around $17.5m-$20.0m per game to make. It seems like that price might be the nominal price of a AAA title. The big question is the Wii: How much exactly does a AAA title cost? Red Steel was a whopping $12m. Although this is low(er) than other next-gen titles like Killzone, Blue Dragon and so on, it's still a sizeable increase from last gen (as I believe typical last gen games were around $7-12m). Most analyists say the increase has been around 200% from last gen. If that was the case, then it was around $7m last gen, and $20m this gen. However, due to this, it seems that everyone argues about the dev costs for the Wii being cheaper, which I am sure is true. However, if a development house was going to spend...$20m on a next-gen AAA game like Dead Rising, I would assume between the coding and such, porting it to the PS3 would cost absolutely no more than $5m, as your not building a new game, your just porting the code over to make it work better. Any payment would goto texture artists to get the graphics up to snuff (which really wouldnt matter if you were going from 360-PS3 and vice versa). However, I seriously doubt this price. Some games such as Madden 07 were on 360, Wii, PS3, PS2, PSP and PC. At that point, I don't think the multi-plat cost THAT much. Expecially in the face of Madden 07 selling somewhere near 5m copies total (or atleast will sell 5m copies). So whats your opinion on the development costs? IMO, it seems like a dev will do one of two things, dev for the Wii as an exclusive, save alot of money, but have a limited audience, or go PS3/360 which have a larger overall fanbase for 3rd party games. IMO, as a dev, it'd seem to make more sence to bite the bullet (if I had the cash) to do a 360/PS3 game, share it between systems, as I'd be nearly guarenteed 1m copies on a AAA title (thus far, very few games that reach that kind of hype would do bad on a multi-plat that cost around $20m).