^I think that nobody disputes that Wii games can be cheaper to make because you'll be cutting man-hours in coding and assets.
I think that one reasonable point is that as soon as you engage into big projects on the Wii, there are several fixed costs that will greatly increqse the total, exactly as in big projects on the HD consoles. The end result is not even close to the one-third or one-fourth ratio that might very well hold for smaller games, and probably close to one-half.
If we really pit a $20M Wii game vs a $48M PS3/360 game (wondering about the reason for these numbers? read the entire thread, you lazy bum) we have:
x console Profit Wii Profit PS3+360 1M -10M -18M
1.5M -5M -3M
2M 0M 12M
2.5M 5M 27M
As you can see developing multiplatform PS3/360 seems to be much more profitable unless your game really bombs, in which case upfront expenses will drag you down much more heavily.
So why do developers go into red on PS3/360?
- GTAIV did cost 100M dollars. If you let your budget grow to such incredible amounts it will be hard to pull into the black. If it was developed on the Wii for 60M dollars it would have needed 6M sales to break even. And I'm not counting the marketing. Does it look more viable?
- EA posted losses. This baffles me a bit, as they have several cash cows. But if you look at their sales, they are mostly around 0.8-1.5M per game. These medium-sized games could be the less profitable in HD, because you take all the extra costs, little of the extra revenue.
- Lair and Haze probably sunk the respective studios. If you try and bite a too big chunk on the HD consoles, you can be crushed pretty hard.
My idea? Going on Wii makes you more money for small and medium sized project, or for games that you know will sell heaps on the Wii demographics. Going on Wii is also safer for small and medium sized project, again especially if it's a casual/family game.
For big projects though, it seems that if you really want big profits you have to stay multiplatform PS3/360. You will also lose less if you come slightly short in sales.
Thus I can see EA going to differentiate, and same for Activision and other big publishers, but hardly taking the "big guns" games on the Wii as straight ports (note that a port to the Wii is almost the same as developing an exclusive as far as assets and code go. But you can still share Voice overs, CGI, marketing etc with the HD consoles).
Comments?
