Are wii development costs really cheaper?

[NJ5]

Pristine20 said:

NJ5 said:

Yes, they are. Capcom has said they moved Monster Hunter 3 to the Wii due to higher PS3 development costs:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/high-ps3-costs-prompt-capcom-to-move-to-wii

Someone from Polyphony Digital has also said PS3 development is much more expensive than PS2 development, due to higher detail in the car models:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2007/12/kazunori-yamauchi-dishes-more-gran-turismo-5-details.ars

Surely the Wii is between PS2 and PS3 in terms of costs.

There's also THQ:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6149154.html

And the famous graph from Factor 5:

http://i32.tinypic.com/10glffn.jpg

 

So basically, ps3 is more expensive to develop for relative to ps2 because developers CHOOSE to put more detail and thus, more time into their ps3 projects? Note the keyword "CHOOSE". PS3 isn't intrinsically more expensive to develop for...it's individual developers that raise their own costs. No one will assassinate Nomura & Co if FFXIII didn't look as good as it does. Millions would still buy the game. It's the devs themselves that are creating their own problems.

MH3 could have released on ps3 with the graphics and thus, time spent for release on wii. It's capcom who decided that since they can spend RE5 time on MH3, it should be a wii game. To blame the PS3 and 360 for these rising costs doesn't make sense to me. It's devs that chose to raise the costs by themselves by competing to say "hey, mine looks better than yours" which is why we have our current problem. If you can't afford the time (and thus, money), don't do it...simple and short. PS360 provide flexibility i.e you can do whatever you want as opposed to the graphical glass celing on wii for graphics-focused studios. Sony and M$ don't refuse licenses for games that aren't graphical powerhouses.

 

You can see it as a choice, or as pretty much an obligation in the never-ending graphics arms race. It would be quite interesting to see what would happen if someone made a PS3 game with Wii graphics, but seriously which publisher is going to do that?