Heavenly Sword sold about 1.5m but devs didn't break even

[Mr Puggsly]

Viper1 said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Viper1 said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Gojimaster said:
i bet these kind of stories are very common on hd systems, and we don't hear about half of them-- that is crazy a game can sell 1.5 mill and make a profit

I think these stories are common on the Wii as well. That would explain why developers often ignore the Wii for quality releases.

To my knowledge only 1 developer has lost money on Wii to the point it required them to shut down.  There are several such cases on the HD side of things.

Average break even point for a Wii title is ~300k units.  Average break even point for an HD title is over 1 million units. 

Don't forget that publishers typically fund the development from the start.  A lot of these studios that went under started the projects with their own money and then pitched them to publishers and failed to generate enough revenue to recoup their initial development costs.  Ninja Theory is alsow one of those developers who began the project prior to the publisher (Sony) getting involved.

That's because HD consoles tend to games of a higher caliber. The typical HD game is much higher quality than the typical Wii game.

Its not hard to believe the average Wii game only need to sell 300K, because the average Wii game is low budget or shovelware. I'm sure games like Dead Space Extraction, CoD, Dead Rising, No More Heroes, Conduit, and Resident Evil need to sell more than 300K.

Dead Rising, No More Heroes, the CoD's, The Conduit and the RE games made profit according to their publishers.   I think DS: Extraction is the only one that's still working toward it.

Development time, staff volume and other factors are what determine production costs.  Even the bigger Wii titles do not requie the same number of programmers, artists, etc...or the same volume of development time as the average HD title does.

I didn't say they bombed. I'm just saying they probably needed to sell more than the typical Wii game. But frankly, they are still low quality and budget titles compared to the typical HD game.

You say the bigger Wii titles don't require the same number of staff (i.e. money). But where are the Wii games that are at par with Gears of War, Uncharted, Mass Effect, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Halo, Killzone, Assassin's Creed, etc. Graphics aside, not as much effort is put into 3rd party Wii games. Look at the last gen, PS2 and Xbox 3rd party games had a lot more effort put into them as well so its not just a matter of graphics.