Are wii development costs really cheaper?

[outlawauron]

famousringo said:

Pristine20 said:

@famousringo

Also, many people seem to think every third party would be better served by switching to wii but I like how you only considered "small, independent devs" because market saturation would be a result of everyone jumping into the fray. Even the ps2's userbase could only manage 200 mil sellers because newcomers usually buy the known good games before taking gambles. Thus newcomers, would still have to consider SMG, MKwii, Zelda, SSBB, wii fit, etc before considering your entry. As saturation and established IPs increase, prospects decrease. So even if the 4 game strategy was possible, it may not look god at that stage.

My rant basically boils down to this: wii isn't the answer many people think. The gaming industry may just have to downsize to restore profitability.

I agree completely. Like I said to your post in the Id thread, diversification is really the way to go.  Big publishers need to spread their projects out and they need to make some spending cuts. Small publishers need to leave HD development to the big guys who can afford to bet big while they work on Wii games, handheld games, and downloadable games.

The big HD project versus four Wii projects comparison is a little extreme. A more representative plan would be switching from two HD projects to one HD project, one Wii project, a few downloadable and handheld projects and some staff cuts.

I don't think that the Wii should monopolize development budgets, but I do think that HD has been over-represented in budgets, Wii has been under-represented, and the budgets themselves have been larger than they should be.

Are you saying here at the end that Wii budgets need to be lower?