| zaphodile said: Reason why developers has not shifted resources towards the wii: Because it's a step backwards. The best graphics I've seen on the wii has been achieveable on the PC for at least 5 years. There is nothing exiting about developing for the wii, besides the controller. Obviously that is not enough. I wouldn't want to be limited to the hardware the wii has to offer when I'm trying to make the best game ever. If the gaming business was all about money everyone would shift to the wii immediatly. That said, EA probably soon will. |
To a certain extent you're correct, but then again the best graphics on the XBox 360 and PS3 have been obtainable since nVidia returned to multiple graphics card PCs with the Geforce 6 series over 2 years ago. At the same time everything the Nintendo DS can produce has been possible on PCs for (roughly) 10 years.
I've said this a few times and I think if I keep saying it it may eventually sink in:
"The only performance publishers care about is sales performance."
Publishers determine what games are created because they fund development and require a healthy return on investment. Most large publishers have several actuaries who study the market and :
- Make Sales projections for the platform
- Make Sales projections for the proposed game based on projected quality (based on team history) and sales patterns on the platform
- Make a budget projection based on the proposed game and historic costs on the platform
From this they calculate the projected profit and their projected return on investment. The ugly trap the PS3 and XBox 360 could find themselves in is that games cost more to develop for these platforms, and the smaller userbases will lead to lower potential sales, which leads to (much) smaller projected returns on investment.
A publisher who is given the choice to spend $40,000,000 to produce an epic, graphically advanced XBox 360 / PS3 game which will only sell 1.5 Million copies or fund 8 $5,000,000 games for the Wii which will each sell 500,000 copies will end up choosing the Wii games.
