Why is programming for HD consoles so expsnive?

[Groucho]

NJ5 said:

Groucho said:

If you're talking about JRPGs, there's honesty not a lot of extra engineering work to be done for a HD console, as opposed to the Wii or PS2. If you're talking WRPGs, where you can fiddle with the environment, and the world is open, there's a LOT of extra engineering work to be done on the HDs, merely because HD WRPGs (e.g.: Oblivion, Fallout 3) are really ambitious.

If Wii RPGs were that ambitious, they would require just as much work... maybe more, since meeting that kind of ambition with lesser hardware would entail a lot of low level engineering work.

But according to Capcom they moved Monster Hunter 3 to the Wii due to high PS3 development costs.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/high-ps3-costs-prompt-capcom-to-move-to-wii

PS: RPGs are not really my thing so I may be committing some mistake here in assuming this is a JRPG.

 

Perhaps they believe expectations are lower on the Wii, and thus they could reduce their scope/cost?

I've personally ported a reasonably advanced Wii project to the PS3 in just a couple weeks (basically by myself), with no performance hiccups at the end.  Its very easy to do if the code is mostly C/C++.