^Are you assuming $10M for a high-end Wii game?
Because I once read a paper - by a software company hiring personnel - that placed PS2 costs in the $5-12M range, and that was about 2005. I don't know, though, if the 12M was for some rare and really big project for the time, like the 100M of GTAIV nowadays, or a more common occurance.
Are there sources for absolute values for, say, SMG or going down a notch for MP3?
Update:
Not what I was looking for, but I found these
- E3 May 2006, THQ president Brian Farrell: "[The Wii] wasn't a whole new programming environment," Farrell said. "So we had a lot of tools and tech that work in that environment. So those costs--and again, I hate these broad generalizations--but they could be as little as a third of the high-end next-gen titles... Maybe the range is a quarter to a half."
This is the most famous one. Is this where the "quarter" number comes from? Interestingly, he blames the reduction of costs mainly to not having to develop new tools and retrain staff.
- August 2006: "Ubisoft's Red Steel game for Wii will incur a development cost of approximately $12.75 million."
I've seen this quoted around, but I could not find the official source, if any.
- November 2006: "THQ Inc. Chief Executive Brian Farrell said that investment in a next-generation video game can run roughly $12 million to $20 million, while a title for the Wii could be in the $5 million to $8 million range."
This last one seems to have been quoted many times. Again, he speaks about "ramp-up costs" to move to the HD platfroms. Please note that this corrects his own former evaluation into a slightly more conservative 25-75%.
- February 2009: EA's John Riccitiello: "development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game than it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game" largely due to Wii developers "producing less art than for high-definition games."
