GDC: More from Molyneux

[Bodhesatva]

kingofwale said:
>Peter Molyneux: You can. The funny thing about that is, for third-party publishers, the Wii is probably just as expensive as PS3 - if not more so - because you've got to downgrade all the graphics and change the control mechanism.


I'm by no mean a Wii fanboy, but I have to disagree with this bitterly.

Are you telling me Ninjabread man or Chicken Shoot downgraded their graphics? NO WAY, that's all their programmers are capable of. Nobody downgrades their graphics, they just don't have to try hard to make it look good, that's not hard to do.

Changing control mechanism in most games are cheap too, instead of pressing "X"/"A" button for attack, you waggle your Wiimote, are you honestly telling me that's going to be expensive?

In conclusive, No, he's wrong.

I blinked there too, then realized he was almost certainly talking about multi-platform development, and there he is likely right.

Converting from the 360 to the PS3 is a job of converting the coding from one system to the other. By most accounts the PS3 is unwieldy, so this is likely fairly expensive.

Converting to the Wii may be simpler in coding terms, but it involves overhauling the graphics engine and the control scheme.