nintendo really could give us a little bit more

[famousringo]

angrypoolman said:
wow, i never would have thought that there actually could have been... a good reason for this.

how would adding a few characters to punch out diminish their returns? i dont get it. it seems to me that it couldnt do anything but help. does it cost that much to program a character and add it to the roster?

It's all about return on investment. I'm now going to pull numbers out of my ass to try to demonstrate a point.

Let x equal the cost of making Punch-Out!!, and y equal the revenue from sales. We'll just assume that Nintendo made a decent margin on the game and y > x.

Lets say Nintendo does what you want and they double the number of fighters in Punch-Out!! The programming, game design, and art and animation of these extra fighters increase the cost of the game by 50%. The added content of the game entices 20% more people to buy the game. More sales, hooray! Cost is now 1.5x and revenue is now 1.2y, and we'll assume that still 1.2y > 1.5x and Nintendo made a good profit.

Now suppose Nintendo does the same thing with another game that has costs and revenues similar to Punch-Out!!, like Sin & Punishment 2. Another doubling of content costing 50% more and earning 20% more. So between these two games, Nintendo spent 3x and earned 2.4y.

The trouble is, that for the price Nintendo paid to double the content of both Punch-Out!! and Sin & Punishment 2, they could have made Kirby Wii and earned 3y on their 3x investment. Even if y is ten times the size of x, so that the investment in more content sees a massive return, Nintendo could have had a better return if they spent that money on a third game instead.

Things aren't as simple as my example, obviously, but publishers have to decide how much content they need to entice the consumer and whether more content will actually result in a better return than different content, or more marketing, or more R&D, etc.