| czecherychestnut said: How am I wrong Zero? If a developer is producing a game that costs $30 million to make and its released on 3 platforms, is that cost not amortised over the sales across all three platforms, and therefore whether a game on a particular platform is profitable is determined by whether it covered its portion of the cost (namely 10 million)? The platform specific work is only a small portion of the overall budget, but that shared cost still needs to be covered by all platforms. If hypothetically a game was released on PS4 and XB1 that cost $20million, and the PS4 version made $15 million and the XB1 version $5million, would it be fair to go 'well the cost of compiling and QA'ing the XB1 specific code cost $2million, so yay XB1 version was profitable', lumping the remaining $18 million on the PS4 to make up the costs for developing the shared graphics, artwork, music, story writing, etc? No it wouldn't, because each version needs to pay for its own contribution of the total development cost. Now, its different if its an actual port where the game was completed on another platform, and at a later date it was recompiled and QA'd for a new platform. In that case the shared development has already been paid for, so the only cost is the platform specific work. However in Watch Dogs case, the Wii U version was developed in step with the other platforms until recently, so it needs to cover some of the shared development cost. From Ubisoft's statement, it sounds like Watch Dogs is getting more Wii U specific design and programming, so its likely that its costs will be higher. |
each part of the game content is ported as it get's finished. the end result, in term of costs, is the same as porting a complete game.
