By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Degausser on 14 January 2011
Edit Thread
RolStoppable said:
Degausser said:

 Well from what I've read and found, the simple fact is that whipping up a PSP game up will take a 6 digit figure, whereas a Wii game 7 figures. Doing both at once will reduce overall costs of doing them seperate, but you're still looking at a bigger investment then just doing one PSP game and the articles I linked to suggest you'd ultimately be spending over double the amount (~$500k for a PSP game, ~1.4m for a Wii game).

 I don't think any of us have any experience or actual knowledge in video game developement so we're simply left to go off what we can extract from articles. All my googling has shown that a) Making these PSP games also on Wii games can cost over double the budget without sure evidence of doubling the sales b) Game which are developed as a Wii / PS2 / PSP multiplat often have an entirely different studio work on them to their PS3/360 counterpart, so clearly it can't be as simple and cheap a process as you want to believe and c) All examples of PSP to Wii ports in the past have taken 4 months minimum to do since the game is announced so again not a quick, cheap, effortless process.

 The original debate all stemmed from why some PS3/360 see PSP ports, but no Wii ports. All evidence I've read clearly just points towards the fact that making a PSP game can be done on a shoestring budget, whereas if they want to do a Wii port as well the budget becomes financially unviable. I can't find anything to suggest that PSP to Wii porting is as cheap and effortless as Rolstoppable wants to beleive - and can only find evidence to the contrary, so I'm going to need to see a link or something.

Those figures for development costs apply to games that are built from the ground up for a given platform. If you make a PSP/Wii multiplatform game, you don't build one version and then completely start from scratch for the other one. Also, your two links contain both the very same story, so I am not sure why you added the second one. Anyway, we are looking at:

a) Incorrect, see above.

b) That doesn't really make sense as a counterpoint. By your own admission, the team that operates separately from the team that handles the PS3/360 versions takes care of PS2/PSP/Wii. You have no examples of split up multiplatform development between PS2, PSP and Wii versions of the same game. If two or three of these platforms are served, then they are always handled by the same studio.

c) Those games in question are PSP to Wii ports after the fact, in other words games that weren't originally planned to see a Wii release and all examples you can come up with are probably titles that were released in 2007 or earlier, before the Wii was even considered a system worth to make games for. The situation has changed in the last three years, because it became clear that the Wii was here to stay.

 The point is that making one PSP game costs ~$500k, making a Wii game a minimum $1.5m and on average $4m. Thus, Blackrock could either make Split second on PSP for say, $500k, or for PSP and Wii for say, $2m (Probably higher). Obviously they feel one could see a return on their money, the other couldn't.

 Yes making a PSP / Wii port would be cheaper then making a PSP game and a Wii game seperate, but the simple fact is all figures I've posted suggest that as soon as these PSP games become Wii games as well, the budget will at the very minimum triple. The only reason that wouldn't make sense if it were cheaper to make a Wii game by first developing a PSP game and then porting it to the Wii - which makes no sense.