Roughly 11,500 industry layoffs since late 2008

[cAPSLOCK]

Mummelmann said:

Good post! Oh, I know that HD needs to take some of the blame, there's just no denying it but often times people leave the economy's overall crash out of the ecuation entirely, not to mention the the fact that this generation has a difficult hardware chasm separating the competitors and that a manufacturer who has previously been soundly beaten is suddenly on top for the first time in nearly two decades. Besides, having seen lists of bankrupt developers in 2009 there's a rather large semblance of either developers who made mobile games (Iphone type phones are selling like hotcakes so all is not well despite having hardware sales, you simply can't count on having blistering software sales), casual games that weren't successful or let everything ride on a big budget title that drowned in either better competition or wallowed in its own mediocrity (think Lair and Haze). I for one perfectly well understand many developers' timidness in restructuring and changing entire processes where making games are concerned, they aren't exactly guaranteed to make heaps of money outside of HD gaming either, as the startingly low sales of many game have shown us (a small profit is to be had for many of them but most big companies don't seek small profits, they rather fancy big ones).

So its either; release big budget games on three platforms that historically have moved that kind of software but aren't assured to or release smaller budget, similar games on a platform (or platforms) that historically hasn't moved much of it at all and risk less of a loss if and when it goes bad. To me, there's really no mystery in why quite a few choose option A, doubly so when they don't know the first thing about what the crowd that will be the recipients in option B really want and whether they can actually make it. Either way, there's bound to be obstacles for everyone and I really am stunned at how well the industry is faring in the face of this plethora of troubles.

Oh yeah, Nintendo's audience isn't an easy one to read and that's been quite a problem. I think an equally large problem on that side of the equation is the lack of willingness to at least crack the book.  To be perfectly fair to column A there really hasn't been any effort outside of Nintendo to see what they want. It's all been ports of PS2 and year+ old games, or just shoddy performing horrible game that would do have the same fate on an HD console. There hasn't been a non-Nintendo stand-out title that equals something like a BioShock, Batman AA, or any of the other many many good third party games. I can understand say 80/20 split or something, but 100/0 is insane at this point.

So in some key ways, absolutely it's a safer bet to go PS360 because the audience is established and predictable. A good example of this is Army of Two, which I found to be thoroughly average and maybe a little too homoerotic and it sold something like 2.5 million copies total between the 2 platforms (I think it scored mid to low 70s). 40th Day, which looks better but still painfully average will probably sell more. Certain genres and themes seem to have a lot more leeway.

The Wii, on the other hand, is brutally merciless. An average game will get you waaay below average sales, an okay game will get you below average sales. However, a really great game will sell like crazy on the system, as Nintendo has proven.

I guess a good thought expirement is this:

42% of HD console owners also own a Wii (we'll go ahead and call it 15 million (or 25%), to make it extra conservative)

Now, given that statistic, not even counting people who are PC centric (like me)

How well do you think a completely original third party game, with as much effort put in as BioShock or MW2 or Oblivion or SF4 or Uncharted 2 or Gears, would do? I have a feeling we're going to find out this year, but I imagine a truly great game that can stand on its own merits on the Wii has the potential to sell over 5 million easily.

Problem is so far we don't know. Column A is a guarentee, column B has a lot of questions.