Wii game budgets 1/4 of HD budgets according to EA

[bazmeistergen]

Groucho said:

NJ5 said:

Viper1 said:

NJ5 said:
Rather interesting considering we've had a supposed developer in this forum repeatedly telling up this is not true.

Exactly what came to my mind. I know we've both told him the art assets jack up the costs significantly.

 

I suppose he's going to tell us John is wrong?

 

 

On topic: Haven't we already known this since 2006?

Not just John but THQ, Polyphony Digital and Capcom... I'm not going to fetch the links now unless someone asks for them, but all those developers/publishers said HD development is more expensive. They just hadn't specifically said how much more, AFAIK.

 

Why would I debate that doing a quality HD crossplat title (that's PS3 + 360) costs 3x as much as doing Wii shovelware?

I'm pretty sure I've stated that this is the case, over and over.  Its not "art" that raises costs, its ambition.  Doing more art for an ambitious HD project is what costs more -- it has very little to do with art quality (except in the case of motion capture, which costs a truckload, if you want lots of it).  An ambitious Wii project would also cost a lot more than shovelware does, even if it were shovelware on a HD platform.  The trouble is, there are no ambitious Wii projects, other than those made by Nintendo 1st party studios, really.

EA hasn't done quality for the Wii in the past -- just shovelware.  I'm sure EA, and the other companies, are telling how it is, from this perspetive.  You guys always seem to be trying to suggest that doing a high-quality Wii title costs 1/4th as much as well.  They aren't saying that at all.  They're saying that, on average (read: shovelware), Wii games are cheap to make (read: because they are shovelware).

I'm not at odds with these statements at all.  Crappy software is cheap.  I totally agree.  It makes no difference what the platform is, either.

 

--EDIT:

Here, let me adjust John's statements to their likely original state, before he went over it and made it "Wii fanboy PC"

 

" Secondly, development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a shovelware game then it is for a quality game"

 "and that is really a function of the capacity of the hardware and the fact that it is not a high-quality gaming box. So we are not producing, you know, the number of – the amount of art for high-quality games."

...btw, notice how he said "amount of art" and not "quality of art".

--

 

As a side note, marketing/advertizing budgets are, of course, the same, no matter what the development platform was.

I'm sorry to have to ram a list of titles on the screen to deny your petty comments about EA's lack of quality games, but tough.

Boom Blox

Skate It

Fifa 09 All Play

Tiger Woods 09

Rock Band 2

Those are just some of the games EA have made that I have really enjoyed (as have many others). Your snobbish and out of touch comments about 'shovelware' are childish and immature. You might be right about the costs, but you say it in such a derogatory manner that I think you should be called up on it.

None of the above games are shovelware. Neither are they perfect.