| theRepublic said: I not really sure what your point is anymore, Groucho, so I'll say this. From what I have heard Super Mario Galaxy cost about 16 million. Grand Theft Auto 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4 both cost over 100 million. That means that the break even point of a high production value Wii game is much, much lower than HD games with high production values. That means that it is generally safer to develop games for the Wii. It is extremely pricey to create all the detail that HD games require. SD games can look great without that level of detail, because you can't see that detail on a SDTV anyway. |
If what you say is true, and SMG cost Nintendo 16M USD to make, consider these items:
(A) The Wii is, basically, a super GameCube. Any GameCube engine (example: SMS) could be easily evolved into a Wii engine. Any evolved game would cost a lot less to make. (i.e. SMG)
(B) The GameCube wasn't very popular. Not many 3rd parties had pre-existing GameCube engines when the Wii hit the market. Nintendo already had a good one, which they likely already invested many (I would say tens of) millions into.
(C) 16M USD is a decent-sized budget for most HD titles. The ones you are mentioning are WAY out of the typical HD"high end expense" ballpark of 20 million. You are quoting the extremes as though they were the norm. On top of that, SMG was likely evolved from SMS. That makes 16M USD pretty dang spendy for it.
Even if you 16M number is true, 16M, given the circumstances, is a HUGE Wii game budget. And summarily, SMG was an *awesome* Wii game.
All I'm saying is that, back to the original topic, the only thing publishers need to "understand" about the Wii, is that it's attach rate, combined with raw numbers, will eventually make PS2/Wii cross-plats unnecessary, and the 3rd parties can spend all their budget on the Wii, and focus on exclusive engine development, to boot. Voila. Good Wii games. Nothing magical about that. Reggie, et. al. need to sell about 80-90M consoles to make that happen -- its not the 3rd parties' "fault". The Wii is too distant from the next-gen consoles to justify ports, and too close to the worlds most popular console (the PS2) to justify exclusives.
