Are wii development costs really cheaper?

[theRepublic]

WereKitten said:
@NJ5
That's why I asked if we have absolute costs for high-end Wii projects.
The trouble is that I see very easily costs on the Wii ramping up to $20M if the developers bring with them the features common on high-end projects on the HD consoles. After all CGI and motion capture will cost the same on the Wii, and same goes for the marketing campaigns that an AAA title sort of requires.

One thing that Wii games will never need is HD quality visuals.  As said above in the thread, the higher definition artwork that is needed takes a lot of extra time.