Not One Step Back, But One Step Sideways - the Wii dilemma and its solution

[Squilliam]

sc94597 said:

Squilliam said:
The Wii has a few problems - It costs more to develop than the HD consoles now for an established player after you take tools, training, risk of new franchises into account.

Furthermore is Nintendo actually supplying sufficient development kits now to all those who want them?

Wait what? The wii costs less to developer for. For the first year developers use upgraded gamecube dev kits, just a few months ago nintendo released a wii specific one.

 

If you're starting out from scratch... Yes.

If you have a house engine  -> Circa $20-30million, paid for. So then if you go and make Gears of war 2 - They made it in 12months or less. Cheap. Probably $15million or less to make, with a certain level of guarenteed sales.

Wii game - You are a large developer so you have to maintain your reputation. You can't release Shovelware and get away with it! So you make a new FPS for the Wii. Cost of engine and design - $15,000,000 or so. Sure you can reuse the engine for a sequel but its a risk even with a large install base.

These are big companies you can't just turn around and say "make me some Wii games" It takes time... whilst on the HD consoles the easy money for people like Ubisoft or Insomniac or Bungie is a sequal. If they started development today, it would take probably 18 months to get the first game out the door at least. So I wouldn't count on third party games to come to the Wii at the same rate as the Xbox360/PS3 for at least a year and then I still would doubt it because the combined 360/PS3 market is more compelling than the Wii market.