Procrastinato said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
Procrastinato said:
LordTheNightKnight said:
Procrastinato said:
SaviorX said:
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.
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For a proper analysis, you guys should 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.
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Some exceptions include GTA IV (considered a safe bet due to the series history), and Too Human (unintentionally).
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Yep, but they are just that.. exceptions. The typical 3rd party HD game costs about $20-25 million, to my knowledge, and that's the total cross-platform cost. $30 million is pushing it to the limits of profitability, and publishers don't like to go there unless they think the franchise is justified in doing so. On top of that, sequels cost substantially less, and the HDs are teeming with sequels (because the games were good to begin with).
That's another thing the HD consoles have going for it -- or, conversely, what the Wii would have had going for it, if 3rd party publishers had invested more in the beginning (and perhaps Nintendo had lowered licensing fees) -- sequels. "Part 2" and "Part 3" are usually radically more profitable than "part 1" ever is, unless the game engine came from another franchise, or was licensed from a middleware developer. Yet another hurdle for new IPs to leap, to make it into the bigtime -- and installments in "stock" franchises don't seem to have been overly high-revenue on the Wii to date. To my knowledge, there also isn't as much middleware available on the Wii as the HDs -- which is a HUGE factor for small dev teams.
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But that's still a hell of a lot more than $12 million or less for a major third party Wii game.
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You'd think so, but when you factor in the raw unit sales and per unit revenue, the Wii somehow comes out behind. In order to make better Wii games, you have to hike the price as well -- which gets you into new, unknown territory.
Nintendo's own successes don't really count as such, from the 3rd party perspective, since Nintendo both benefits from no licensing fees (which is a big chunk of the revenue), and from long standing franchises (which is huge huge huge), as well as pre-existing engine technology and tools (from the GameCube architecture), and direct access to internal support.
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The only figure I have for a Nintendo 1st party game is SuperMario Galaxy at ~$25 million. Super Smash Brothers Brawl might have been around there as well.
As for sequels, almost every "casual/mini-game compilation/puzzle/alternative" game on the Wii that has sold worth a damn has had a sequel; which usually sells less than the last entry. Look at MySims, Game Party, Boom Blox, Dance Dance Revolution, etc.
EA CEO John Ricitiello said in January 2009: "Development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game then it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game. That is really a function of the capacity of the hardware, and the fact that it is not a high-definition gaming box, so we're producing less art than for high-definition games.
Making games multiplatform actually costs more money, so the creators of a title wish to receive their money back from sales on the secondary console, whether PS3 or 360. The increase isn't usually too large though; but these titles still venture into the $26 million range.
