Are wii development costs really cheaper?

[Pristine20]

HappySqurriel said:

WereKitten said:

^Well, out of control development costs will lose you money by definition on any platform. That's what the control should be, isn't it? :)
Anyway, about fixed costs...
Don't you agree about CGI, motion capture, voices, marketing? If Capcom had made RE5 as a Wii exclusive I doubt that they would have spent any less in marketing.

Btw, the profit on retail numbers i used do not come from retail price. I am pretty sure that I read somewhere that the profit per sale is lower on Wii than on 360/PS3, and it seemed that other people on these forums agreed with it. But I'll look for a reference.

 

For a high profile game you would probably market it well regardless of platform ... In contrast, Haze was heavily marketed primarily because of how expensive the development was and had it been produced for the Wii (at a lower cost) its likely that Ubisoft wouldn't have seen the value in marketing it much at all.

On top of that, high quality CGI videos are not cheap and can cost millions of dollars for every minute of video (they can be done for less money but they tend to be lower quality) ... It is quite a bit different trying to justify $20 Million to develop CGI video for a game that already costs $40 Million and in-engine cutscenes will cost $5 Million, than it would be to justify $20 Million to develop CGI video for a game that already $10 Million and in-engine cutscenes will cost $2.5 Million ...

 

Haze was advertised because it was thought to have "Halo" potential if people only knew about it. I get the feeling that sony did the marketing though so that wouldn't have added to it's cost to Ubi. I don't get the idea that wii games won't need advertising because they are cheaper. IMO, 3rd party wii games don't get advertised so they can stay cheap. Marketing costs tend to rack up quick.

The whole CGI stuff is just moot. It's all about manhours and salaries. You don't seem to "get" the root cost of development. Read Shams post, he's a developer and he confirms what I consider the true cost of development in my OP. CGI = more time in. If extra levels were taken out to make time for CGI, it won't necessarily cost more. All that other stuff is technology that the studio already possesses.