Rhonin the wizard on 08 April 2009
| greenmedic88 said: There seem to be quite a few people who think that anything published on the Wii, or that focusing development dollars on the platform equates to the highest return on investment, and presumably the most sensible path to profitability as game developers. While I think his words may have been taken out of context, Fils-Aime was recently quoted in the NY Times as saying it takes about a million units sold for a title to turn a profit on the Wii. I'm guessing he meant Nintendo published/developed titles as they tend to take longer to produce, and presumably take more resources to develop. But the assumption that other games developed for the Wii made a profit, regardless of sales, because "it was really cheap to develop anyway," is just that: an assumption. Development dollars for the PS3/360/PC, while unquestionably higher, still represent a larger (but not necessarily broader) potential buyer base. This is most likely why we're still seeing virtually no change in game publishing trends with respect to big budget games, despite the success of the Wii in the console market. User base demographics are more important than simple market share in this respect. So lead developing on the Wii (because is has half the console market) makes virtually no sense for many publishers given the target audiences for their games. The other half of the console market, with a fair share of overlap with the PC market, does not see the Wii as a primary platform for their gaming or we'd be seeing higher sales with respect to third party titles. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/technology/30game.html?_r=1 "Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, said publishers of games for its Wii console needed to sell one million units of a game to turn a profit. He said that was a lower threshold than for the other consoles. Only 16 out of 486 games for Nintendo Wii game machines have sold more than one million units as of March 1, according to NPD, which tracks the sales of consumer products. (Nine of the best sellers are made by Nintendo.) Mr. Fils-Aime said Nintendo recognized the economics were changing when it developed the Wii. He said the company deliberately did not add high-definition capability to the Wii so games would be cheaper to make. " |
"Sigh"
I hate misinformation.
“The fact is, there’s no single magic number that defines profitability for a game. It’s all based on the level of investment, based on the price point, and so it’s unfortunate that I was misquoted in that article.”
Finally, one clarification on the story we did Monday on this subject. For the story, Nintendo had told me that publishers of Wii games need to sell only one million games to turn a profit. The company wrote me to say that it meant that publishers can make a profit selling fewer than one million copies of a particular game. Nintendo declined to be any more specific about a number. - NY Times
