SEGA: Its not game over for Mature Wii Titles

[dunno001]

Words Of Wisdom said:

Gamerace said:
There is certainly something to consider here.

The benefit with HD games is if they do well you get an immediate return on investment but for most games, they quickly nosedive off the charts after that. If the game doesn't do so well, well... your f---ed. Time to start begging someone to bankroll your next game or face bankrupcy if your a small developer and even the big boys often end up laying off staff to reduce the impact of a misfire.

Wii games on the other hand, may take longer to reimburse your initial investment but then they keep on giving and giving for a long time. That's golden as development of games can take 1-2 years so if a developer can create a series of games that have staying power, they can have a nice monthly paycheck - inbetween game launches - that they can almost bank on instead of one big payout and then nothing for another 3-5 yrs like with HD development. Also really reduces the impact of the odd misfire.

To be fair games like GTA4, CoD4&5, Halo3, Oblivion all have great staying power and the same is true for HD system but harder to achieve.

This is one of the reasons that developing for an HD system is attractive.  

You get the return on your investment immediately.  If you're a small developer with low or otherwise no cashflows then you want to recoup as much of your investment as fast as possible.  The difference between getting your money back now or later could decide whether or not you make payroll.

Not necessarily. You need that total cost up front before you release the game, which is higher on the HD systems. You could make a game for the HD systems at $25 million, or make the same game on Wii for about $10 million, saving about $15 million. If this $15 million can't get you through a waiting point (and actually, $10 million of that could be put toward making your NEXT game), then you failed at overhead management. Release the game while you still have $15m in the bank, then start working on game 2, and let the sales slowly come in. Compare this to spending all $25m on HD, and now you have nothing in the bank. If your game flops, it'll hurt either way, but that $25m now could be $5m, and you're still having to pay those employees...