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

[HappySqurriel]

Groucho said:

On the subject of Boom Blox being good... There are lots of cheap XBLA and PSN titles, that were dirt cheap to make, that also, are quite good.

Think of it this way. Third party publishers basically run a manure business. They run their manure business with cows who live/graze on a mountain pasture with a stream running through it. There's gold in the mountain. Every once and a while, its inevitable that, when you are throwing the piles of meadow muffins into the truck, a gold nugget shows up. For some reason, rather than hiring miners (which costs alot), third party publishers just continue the manure business (which is cheap) and get decent income (or not) with the occasional "prize".

Boom Blox == nugget. Do you think Braid cost a lot to make "because its on a HD console"?

 

While Braid may be good, there is a reason why WiiWare is more popular than XBox Live Arcade for developers ... While I have never heard exact figures, Microsoft is (supposedly) charging much more per sale on XBox Live Arcade than Nintendo is charging for WiiWare.

On top of this, if you can produce a game with enough content to justify its release as a budget title ($29 or $39) for the Wii your revenue off of sales should be much higher than if you released it for WiiWare or XBox Live Arcade.