SEGA: Its not game over for Mature Wii Titles

[Exblackman]

Procrastinato said:

noname2200 said:

Procrastinato said:

moondeep said:
I don't think Procrastinato truly doubts that the Wii is FAR cheaper to develop for, but he just likes to see numbers to make him feel warm and fuzzy. I love numbers also. That being said, it's very hard to theorycraft how much a HD-exclusive game would've cost if done soley for the Wii and vice versa. I think we're asking a big much to extrapilate based on incongruent examples.

Well put, moondeep.  I just like hard evidence.  I'm not trying to stir up trouble.  I just don't like unsubstantiated claims, and leaps of faith based upon them.

We've heard lots of musings about this, but... there really isn't even a shred of proof.  Every comment we've ever heard from a publisher has been pretty vague, with regards to the games they're talking about.  Its going to extremes to imagine that Wii games can be both cheap and high-grade, when basically all the truly high-quality titles we've seen on the Wii thusfar have cost a decent amount of money (like SMG @ $17M).  

I want to see the $5M Wii title people hold as high in regard as games that cost $20M to make (like Uncharted, on the PS3, which supposedly cost about $19M).  Until then, lets let the known facts speak, and not make nutty assumptions -- even if they eventually turn out true-ish.

Out of curiousity, where'd you get $17 million from?

SMG was made by Nintendo EAD Tokyo, and it was their only project during its duration.

SMG duration: 2.5 years (source: Yoshiaki Koizumi, director, SMG.  EDGE Online post-mortem.  http://www.edge-online.com/features/post-mortem-super-mario-galaxy?page=0,0)

EAD Tokyo size: 65 (source: IGN database, http://games.ign.com/objects/762/762797.html)

Average cost to develop a game, per dev, per year (survey sometime before 2005, Gamasutra... find the link yourself, since I'm too lazy): $100K

 

Then of course, there's that "math" thing, which people love to question.  2.5 x 65 x 100K = 16.25 million, at a minimum.  Oh unless you think the best of the best, i.e. Nintendo, costs less than average.

There's an actual quote somewhere from a Nintendo source (it may have even been Miyamoto), stating this number almost exactly.  I can't find it at the moment though, and I'm tired of searching for it.  If anyone honestly doubts the math, and really want to pretend SMG just rolled off some generic cheap assembly line... feel free (not referring to you noname2000... you're being decent) to disprove the math here, or find the quote and show me that I misread it, since this, and it, represents a hell of a lot more than some ridiculous "Wii development is cheepz" fantasy being cooked up here, and in many foolhardy threads of the past on these boards.

Did you just  compare the cost of Nintendo Wii's most expensive game made to  probably PS3 cheapest and still say the wii is not cheap to make games for.Because Miyamoto has alreagy stated that SMG was expensive game they made for the wii. If taht true it pretty proves the wii is games by the whole are cheaper to make the HD systems if the lowest number to make  an HD game is higher than the most expensive wii game.Just seems to me to be common sense to me.