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superchunk on 04 January 2008
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andersonalex said:
ultraslick said:

But for simultaneous development of all 3 consoles, it makes zero sense to develop it for the wii, then port it to the 360/PS3


That's not necessarily true. There may be valid reasons for developing the game on the Wii first. Perhaps your primary audience is on Wii and you want to take full advantage of that console's technical capabilities so that you maximize your sales. In that case you might design and develop the game on the Wii and then port it to the others.

You might also do your work on the Wii first if you don't want to spend the money on all of the development machines for the other systems. Remember that the Wii kits cost much less.

Given that the Wii version may take significantly less time and money than the others, you may also elect to do it first so that you can begin earning money to help support the development, and also to verify that the title sells as well as you projected.

 


 I think under the scope that the Wii has 50%+ marketshare it makes perfect sense. You perfect the version that has the greatest chances of financial return. Then you spend a little more and remap the controls, add some visual enhancers, get it running smoothly at some resolution greater than 480p.

I still don't see why that is illogical. It may not be what you or the average developer wants, but that is what the poeple who sign paychecks will want. They will want the greatest financial gain. They won't care about pushing the limits of the PS360.

Look at last gen, that is exactly what happened. Granted, the PS2 is closer in hardware to the Xbox than the Wii is to the PS360, but, they still didn't focus on the more powerful machine to get the best looking game. They focused on the version they thought would payoff better. The lower powered PS2.

Afterall, the Xbox was capable of putting out HD graphics. It was a huge thing when some of xbox's games came out in 720p (Source). Using that as a basis the Wii technically could do that as well.

I think some of you are thinking "why focus on the least powered system when you could make amazing looking games on the others?". However, you are making a false assumption that the publishers care about making the best looking game. As I noted above, they care about the bottom line and have good results to share with thier shareholders.