Next-Gen Development Costs

[r2007]

Scott Steinberg, Sega

BIZ: One of the supposed advantages of developing for the Wii is that it should cost far less than developing on Xbox 360 or PS3. How much would you estimate Wii development to be on average, or how much less than 360 or PS3 do you think it is? SS: Yeah, I’ve been asked this question a lot and it’s difficult to put it [in terms] of the kind of relationship you want, headline type relationship, because it’s like buying a car… You can buy a $100,000 car or you can buy a $20,000 car. Next-gen games don’t automatically cost $20 million dollars. It really depends on what you want to create. And you can spend, and people do, spend $15 million on today’s gen games. So, there’s no doubt that Wii is a more affordable [console] for developers and publishers to build games on; it’s much more analogous to the GameCube. And there’s no doubt that you can spend a lot of money chasing billions of polygons on the 360 and PS3, but you also don’t have to. I think the industry uses the 2X factor on next-gen games and that’s certainly a decent rule of thumb—it doesn’t always have to be that way—and we’re far below that on the Nintendo Wii. There’s no need—well you can I guess—but there’s no need to go that high.

http://www.videogamesblogger.com/2006/07/03/sega-speaks-about-ps3-wii-reveals-virtua-fighter-5-sonic-wild-fire-due-march-2007.htm