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Squilliam on 31 December 2008
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couchmonkey said:
Squilliam said:
Because once to factor in all the costs, the bigger the game the less the Wii "advantages" on overall cost are important.


1. Massive advertisement; You have to advertise as much if not more than HD games to target the wider demographic of users on the Wii.

2. The cost/benifit ratio still applies; Why spend $10,000,000 making a Wii game look good when for an extra $10,000,000 the game will look 5* better?

3. Overall cost ratios come down and favour HD development more as your overall budget increases. Wii $10,000,000 game + $10,000,000 advertisement vs HD $20,000,000 game + $10,000,000 advertisement and the ratio is 2:3.

4. Easier to target demographics and advertising + word of mouth very easy to do with the HD community. The demographics they target for these games are deep, wide and easy to get to within the HD owner userbase. Also never underestimate the power of word of mouth selling games, especially within Xbox Live

1. I'd like to see evidence to support this. The only advertising budget I'm familiar with was $20 million for Lost Planet on Xbox 360. Anecdotally, I do not see more Wii advertising than HD advertising.

3. Except that a blockbuster HD game tends to cost more to develop. Lost Planet cost $20 million and GTA IV cost $100 million, as examples. The highest known budget for a Wii game is $10 million for Red Steel (which I have no idea how they spent that much on that game). Of course, Gears of War was done for $10 million as well, but generally speaking, you can do a blockbuster for less on Wii, because it doesn't require as many art assets.

Ultimately, though, I don't totally disagree with the OP. I think HD consoles are well-suited to blockbusters; maybe more so than Wii. That said, I think Malstrom may be right that the blockbuster system is being disrupted by Wii. The Wii had no blockbuster games this holiday (unless you count Animal Crossing or maybe Guitar Hero and Rock Band) yet it outsold the competition with ease.

Why does it bother people?  Two reasons: One is that we're totally jealous.  The other is that it makes no sense for companies to be putting more money and effort into less popular consoles.

1. Sorry a quote which is too hard to find.

3. The Gears costs are misleading, Microsoft provided so much support for that game so its misleading to use it as an example. GTA IV is probably on the extreme end, they built an incredible engine which is easily better than anything else on the market today for creating a vibrant open world so their costs are over exagerated compared to the realistic middle.

What we do know is this -> 1 Million sales is probably too small so your average HD blockbuster game is probably up to the $40-60 Million mark (All inclusive) and you can count Resident evil 5, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Gears of War 2 amongst this grouping. Big advertisement, 1st party engines and massive sales (Usually) are the hallmark of this group.

I would say your standard HD releases being $5-15 Million to develop and an extremely flexible advertisement budget going on top of that. Your Prince of Persias, Mercenaries 2, Race Driver Grids fall within this category. Overall development costs will probably range between $10 - $30 million for these releases, and they tend to use third party engines to reduce the overall risk and development costs.

On the Wii you have the massive advertisement budgets which can meet and exceed the HD budgets easily. For example Wii-Fits advertisement is well on its way to passing the $100,000,000 mark at this point and other Nintendo releases can also see massive advertisement. With the overall costs this high the development costs start to be overshadowed by the advertisement. Look at Movies for a prime example of this where they can easily spend more again to market than to actually develop the movie.

 

 



Tease.