| cura said:
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That's something of a myth, actually. Are you aware that of all the markets available for developers, on paper the HD consoles are some of the least viable in terms of marketshare/development costs? It's true!
There are currently ___ markets out there: the HD consoles (which I'm generously lumping together), the Wii, the DS, the 3DS, the PSP, the NGP, the PC, the Apple app store, XBLA, XBIG, WiiWare, DSiWare, 3DSWare, PSN, and the Android Market. The most expensive of these, by far, is the HD console market, which demands multiple times more in time/team size than the other markets. It's exponentially more expensive to operate in that market than in any other! Despite that, it accounts for barely over 100 million units combined, worldwide, not all of which are currently active.
By contrast, the third home console, the Wii, is only 20 million or so units behind, but its development costs is about a third of the HD consoles. This means that the market is roughly the same size, but a game needs only sell a fraction of the number of copies to break even. And the Wii is in turn 2-3 times more expensive to develop for than the PSP, which is only 20 million units behind the Wii in terms of hardware sold.
All of these markets are a joke when compared to the DS, which has sold almost half-again as much as the HD consoles combined, but whose development costs are a mere pittance, often weighing in at less than a tenth of the HD consoles' price tag. We haven't even begun to talk about the PC market, which has access to, what, a billion-plus people, and whose market has proven it is willing to support development costs anywhere between those of the HD consoles and simple flash games. All without ever paying royalties to a platform holder!
And while I'm nowhere near as big on the digital platforms as some, I have to say that dev costs for those platforms is bargain-basement compared to even the DS, notwithstanding the fact that most of the markets theoretically have almost the same market as the system they're hosted on...
So actually, on paper, development on the HD consoles has always been the least financially viable option out there. "But noname," you respond, "that's an absurd statement. The HD consoles have shown that they're just a viable for third-parties than the other systems. More so, even!" True. But that's because third-parties by and large ignored the same mathematics of marketshare vs. operating costs, and decided en masse to develop for the systems that financially remain the least viable option.
In other words, sheer weight of numbers made it work, since we gamers drift where the games are, and third-parties decreed that they would be on the HD consoles. But let us not pretend that financial viability was ever third-parties' impetus. You actually said it best: "it may be that developers prefer to make games for the HD consoles over the Wii." I think it's time we all accepted that simple truth.
