Are wii development costs really cheaper?

[Pristine20]

kitler53 said:

Pristine20 said:

If you switch the people who were making ps360 games to wii games, how would there be a significant decrease in cost if these guys don't take a pay cut? Also, since wii games apparently take less time to develop, would these guys always be working on something to justify their paychecks or would they be fired and rehired or are we just going to have lots of studio downsizing as part of the paradigm shift to wii game production because if you think about it, the costs to the publisher are still the same whether it be 1 HD console game of the 4 wii games.

 

they don't take a pay cut, that's just stupid.  it's all about the number of manhours, the total number of hours put into the project by every employ working on the project.  so like you said, "wii games apparently take less time to develop" and therefore cost less money.

think of it like this, a 40 member team over the same timeperiod could either put out 1 HD game or ~3 wii games (just made those numbers up btw, don't quote them as absolute fact).  if the combined sales of 3 wii games is lager than 1 HD game than the wii games were a better investment.

 

This makes sense and is the basis for my analysis. However, if you consider the fact that those man hours would be used for working on another game, then the development cost is the same and the publishers are still not saving money if no one gets fired. In fact, the costs would go up if marketing is factored into the equation. Marketing is relative so I chose to leave  it out. Thus unless people are fired or take a pay cut, publishers still expend the same $$$. Now we have to consider if the multiple wii games would be a more profitable venture.

Many expect the wii to be the bastion where all 3rd parties can come together and profit again. If they all switched to this strategy and we had 4 wii dead spaces (or 2 if they were the same quality for every 1 on ps360 and maybe even less if there is serious marketing), some won't sell much regardless of userbase. Won't this put devs back into the same spiral they tried to run from? Note that I never factored demographics into any of this to abstain from complexity but that actually would even make things worse because your typical dead space fan may not be a significant portion of the wii's 50% marketshare.