Groucho said:
You make it sound pretty great, in Wii-developer land. Like there is free lunch and everything. |
Oh? I'd like to see where exactly I wrote that. Please, do tell. Alternatively, you can keep beating on your strawman.
I hate to tell you that this just isn't the case. Money brings quality.
Yeah. And? You're making some very elementary mistakes, and I'm a little surprised at you.
First, you're overlooking the fact that money brings quality primarily because talent is assigned to the projects that are sucking up the big bucks. Is anyone at all surprised that publishers devote their A-teams to big-budget games, while letting the new guys and the D-listers work on their shovelware projects? Anyone? Correlation is not causation, my friend.
Second, you misread what I said. Not surprising, since it's easier to defeat the arguments you want others to make, rather than the ones they do. Go back and read my post. I can't seem to find anything that states that Wii developers can make fantastic quality games for pennies. Can you point it out to me, please?
Third, and this goes to what I did write (so please pay attention this time), I did not say that Wii development is free. What I did say is that the initial buy-in costs of Wii games are much, much lower than the start-up cost of an HD game. You really can't argue this point, not without making yourself seem really, really silly (although it looks like you tried nonetheless...). We have too many publishers saying the exact same thing for you to refute it. Do yourself a favor, and don't even try.
I'll let that sink in a bit. I'll explain the implications of it later.
As a matter of fact, the Wii is in the terrible position of having to "compete" with consoles that far outpower it, unlike any console from a previous generation, where the power differences were much lesser.
Granted. It's also not an argument I think you want to make, my friend. More power means more staff, more expertise, more bugs, more problems...more money required.
Hey, isn't that what I just said...?
Squeezing performance out of a console costs darn near as much as throwing the kitchen sink in does.
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You'll need to clarify this one for me. It's very poorly written, so I can interpret in two different ways.
Do you mean that unlocking a console's capabilities costs as much as...unlocking a console's capabilities (an impregnable position, I suppose...)? Or do you mean that getting the utmost from the Wii costs just as much as putting similar effort into an HD game? The former argument is a non sequitir. The latter argument is defeated by mountains of data. Please tell me there's a secret third meaning that doesn't make this sentence ridiculous.
There are no "cheap" quality titles on the Wii, excepting those innovative titles that also appear (in other forms) on the HD consoles. Braid, for example. No More Heroes, for example. Pixeljunk Eden, for example. Super Stardust HD? Geometry Wars? Lost Winds? Those are great, great games. They were dirt cheap to make.
I like this paragraph. It does a great job of illustrating how incredibly out of touch with the situation you are. The fact that you're trying to compare downloadable games for the HD systems with retail disc games for the Wii when it comes to the money/quality relationship is a great argument. For me.
Or have you forgotten that the download services are meant to be a low-cost way for small developers (who can't afford to make HD disc games) to create some games for those platforms? Do you realize that you're comparing the cheapest that the HD consoles have to offer with the average Wii development cost? Or are you trying to claim that the Wii's download service, WiiWare, costs just as much to develop for as the HD consoles' services? Hint: Do not go forward with that claim. You will lose...
Are they high production value? No. Do they stand toe-to-toe with the high production value HD titles? No. Are they fun? You bet.
Confused again. I thought we were discussing how Wii costs are generally lower than HD costs, making it easier for small and mid-sized developers to keep making games. Why are we discussing how fun a handful of games are again?
Ah! I see it! This is meant as a rebuttal to my sentence that "A game like Boom Blox or Little King's Story, for instance, is less likely to have been made for the HD consoles, because of those consoles' high price of entry."
Except that, again, you're trying to compare XBLA and PSN games to Wii retail games. I know you see the problem with that by now. I mean, it's really not all that difficult...
If you are saying that the Wii can have great games, for cheap, just like PSN and XBLA, you are absolutely correct.
Here we are. The fallacy explicitly stated. Compare apples to oranges, and hope no one notices.
So what happens when someone does...?
The Wii is no easier, and by that I mean cheaper, to make high production value games for, than the other consoles. The fact that the "Average wii game costs less to make" is a statement about the average Wii game... not the cost of development per unit quality on the Wii.
I'm having an internal debate right now. On the one hand, I've already written this long post. On the other hand, clicking "Post" means I have to keep dealing with someone who's okay with ignoring reality and substituting his own wishes in its place. "Average development costs just magically skyrocketed when the HD systems came out. Developers suddenly decided that they would all spend a bunch of money to make me, the gamer, happy, their bottom line be damned."
Alright, I've been pretty patronizing so far. I take partial blame for that, although I do feel justified in doing so in light of your post. But let's try to talk some sense here, no sarcasm involved.
What makes you think that all the developers and publishers are lying about the Wii being cheaper to develop for than the HD consoles? What leads you to believe that the only reason HD development budgets are so much higher than those of the last generation, and the Wii, are driven exclusively, or even just primarily, by a sudden uptick in the amount of effort publishers and developers decided to throw into their games? In light of the bountiful data to the contrary, what support can you cite to convince us all that "[t]he fact that the '[a]verage wii game costs less to make' is a statement about the average Wii game... not the cost of development per unit quality on the Wii"?
I'm seriously curious about the answer to these questions. I am willing to change my mind, if you can bring forth the hard data to prove it is the lack of effort, not an extrinsic difference in the systems, that make Wii games so much cheaper to develop, on average, than HD games. Do so, and I will cheerfully re-evaluate my beliefs, and concede this discussion to you.
