Why third parties should not develope on PS3 or 360

[Legend11]

cjpierciiw said:

These are the weekly nextgen sales % in Japan.

	Wii	PS3	X360
12/3/2006	91.09%	7.81%	1.10%
12/10/2006	53.72%	26.56%	19.71%
12/17/2006	54.11%	36.43%	9.46%
12/24/2006	74.77%	20.48%	4.75%
12/31/2006	53.98%	36.80%	9.22%
1/7/2007	65.92%	26.52%	7.56%
1/14/2007	71.26%	22.06%	6.68%
1/21/2007	73.41%	20.44%	6.15%
1/28/2007	74.62%	18.54%	6.85%
2/4/2007	73.36%	20.52%	6.12%
2/11/2007	72.61%	22.83%	4.57%
2/18/2007	71.31%	23.10%	5.59%
2/25/2007	77.23%	18.92%	3.85%
3/4/2007	54.72%	41.69%	3.58%
3/11/2007	58.93%	36.92%	4.15%
3/18/2007	73.34%	23.19%	3.47%
3/25/2007	78.01%	18.56%	3.43%
4/1/2007	68.74%	25.49%	5.77%
4/8/2007	73.28%	22.19%	4.53%
4/15/2007	81.36%	15.26%	3.39%
4/22/2007	84.31%	12.60%	3.09%
4/29/2007	83.83%	12.77%	3.41%

1. Starting with the NES no system has won without winning Japan.

By looking at this chart it is obvious that the Wii is dominating Japan, and is getting progressively stonger as the weeks go by.

2. At the current rate of sales the Wii will most likely pass the XB360 in WW sales by the end of July. That is just around 8 months for the Wii and 20 months for XB360.

3. Cost to develope on the Wii is at least half the cost of the other two systems.

Why pay over twice the developement costs for a systems that will have a far smaller user base? Devs need to look at the likely ROI (return on investment) for their developement times and efforts, and realize that far greater returns can be made on the Wii. Yes they can make money on all systems, but a bunch more on the Wii.

4. The Wii is the only system that can reach and likely beat PS1/PS2 user base.

PS3 and XB360 are far to expensive to hit a mass market price like $100, but this is possible for the Wii.

 

So what do you think is the best way for third parties to go?

I think it's far more complicated than just who has the highest installed base in a specific country (Japan which isn't even the largest market).  See my post in the game budgets thread.  As a quick example though if your company was making a first person shooter would you even care what the sales in Japan were?  Historically first person shooters have sold horribly in Japan so in that kind of example Japan likely would be considered an afterthought at best.  Also simply to say "it's cheaper" to develop on the Wii doesn't take into account *a lot* of things.  For example Xbox 360 games are on average $10 higher in price than Wii games, this affects things more than you'd think.  Add to that Xbox Live's use of downloadable content for games which can be another source of revenue, etc.  And some games genres just sell better on one console than another because the fans of each console may prefer different things.  If everyone just used the *simple logic* of developing their games for the system with the highest installed base then every game except first party would be coming out for just one system which simply isn't the case and there are good reasons for it.