Are wii development costs really cheaper?

[NJ5]

WereKitten said:

^Lair costed about that much to develop, actually (12-15M).

And SMG is first party, so obviously Nintendo makes more on each copy. But if it costed 20M then there's no way it could break even at 250k sales. More about 0.8-1M, probably.

Anyway, we're talking third party here.

I think Lair cost more than that:

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

Apparently $12-15m was the initial budget, with costs getting bigger later (and the game got delayed).