Analyst: Wii Is 'Fool's Gold' For Game Investors

[theRepublic]

Procrastinato said:

Mr Khan said:

If we throw the whole notion of profit out the window, then this article has a point.

That's an interesting point.  Do we actually know the costs of making a game like CoD:WaW, Metroid Prime 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld, or The Conduit on the Wii, or are we just assuming that its in the same "1/4th as much" ballpark that all the shovelware is?  Does the marketing and manufacturing cost 1/4 as much on the Wii as well, and does it garner the same revenue per unit sold?

Takes a lot of work to turn a profit.  Having 5-8x the sales numbers must be a nice place to start.

For The Conduit, I found this:

theRepublic said:
Let's look at it in an apples to apples comparison:

Killzone 2 is an exclusive FPS for the PS3. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. Its development costs are rumored to be $60 million.

The Conduit is an exclusive FPS for the Wii. It is designed to push the console to its graphical limits as much as possible. I can't find anything on its development costs. Does anyone think it even comes close to $60 million?

Squilliam said:

theRepublic said:

Squilliam said:

theRepublic said:
Going back to my apples to apples comparison:

Killzone 2 is rumored to have a $60 million dollar development budget. To be fair, it was originally supposed to be $30 million before it went overbudget.

Using Groucho's numbers, development for The Conduit should be around $5.25 million (30 employees x $100,000 cost of employees x 1.75 years in development if released in June '09).

Keep in mind that these are BOTH exclusive FPS. Also keep in mind that BOTH of these games are supposed to push the limits of what is graphically possible on their respective consoles.

Now you can add third party technologies, voice acting, motion capture, publishing costs, advertising costs etc. It'd probably total at least $10M excluding advertising.

 

Interesting.

$15 million comes up to exactly 1/4 of $60 million...

$15 million, 1/4 cost? nononono KZ2 will probably cost about or a little over $100,000,000 once you factor everything in.

Just development vs development its >10M vs ~60 or ~1:6 between The Conduit and Killzone 2.