SaviorX said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
Procrastinato said:
If EA was making a profit on Wii exclusives, relative to 360/PS3 multiplats, I feel certain that they would know it -- being a public company and accountable and all that.
The revenue numbers, thus, tell a story. The revenue on Wii exclusives is the same as PS3 multiplats. Apparently, perhaps even obviously, the money to develop/market/etc. the average Wii exclusive exceeds that of the average multiplat PS3 title's portion of multiplat development.
Every assumption that Wii games are, indeed, made from $5 and a unicorn fart is true -- but unicorns are really quite rare, and getting one to fart for your game apparently costs many millions of dollars, so it works out poorly for the Wii in the end. EA is asking Nintendo to remove the unicorn fart part of Wii software development for this reason. Maybe allow for pegasi or specially trained Lipizzaners instead.
Jokes aside, Wii development isn't as cheap as the average forum joe likes to think. It is a fair amount cheaper, but not so much so that it can come out the clear winner in today's marketplace, especially when the Wii stands alone (from an architecture perspective), and requires an entire dev team all to itself. The Wii cannot get out of the demographic scatter issue, or the architectural uniqueness issue. These are pretty severe problems, in the end.
|
It started out not a lot less, and while games do cost closer to high end 6th gen games, costs of HD game development has skyrocketed (see the comments about Gran Turismo 5 costing $60 million, and the developers thinking that isn't so much), so Wii development is a lot less by that virtue.
|
Yea, and that $60 million figure does not even include marketing.
Shoot, I could count with one hand the amount of 3rd party Wii games that cost more than $9 million.
|
For a proper analysis, you guys shouldn't be comparing 1st party exclusives to 3rd party games. Nintendo, Sony, and MS are justified in spending a lot more money on their exclusives, because they help move hardware, thus providing income indirectly in the future, and they make more per unit, since there are no licensing fees to pay.
1st party exclusives almost always cost a LOT more than 3rd party games of similar types.
