From April 2007 PSM: Director Yosuke Hayashi:

We don't really take the hardware sales into account. I mean, we didn't do that back in the days of the Xbox. Can you imagine? What if some one said, "why did you bring out Dead or Alive 3 if you had no idea if the Xbox was going to sell or not?" Thats not the philosophy at Team Ninja. Our philosophy is that no matter how small the install base of hardware is, there is an install base.

I think developers who use the hardware sales numbers as an excuse, it's because they don't really have faith in their product. They want to wait untill the hardware has enough units...because they know that their software can't stand on it's own. They need to have millions of installed users so that people will walk into a store and maybe buy their game by mistake. Or they figure,"Hey, if theres a 100,000,000 people that use the system, some of them have to buy our game." For us, were total opposite. We have faith that what we make is compelling enough that if even one more person, or two more people, or a hundred more people, or a thousand more people get their hands on the game, thats good enough for us because were confident that theyre going to have a good experience. It doesn't matter how much hardware is out there.

I bet the guys that released Gundam Musou were wishing the PS3 install base was larger. The game could have sold 1mill units on the PS2 (if timed properly).

And this is all very nice for "huge budget", "high profile" titles - but it sucks if you are the little guy.

I think that first of all, it's not a lack of faith from developers; the numbers just don't add up for accounting. Therefore, it's not a developer excuse, it's just that whoever is in charge of finance doesn't see a good possibility of recovering their investments.

Of course there is always an install base. The 32X, Jaguar and Virtual Boy also had install bases. That doesn't mean it makes sound business sense to develop for those consoles.

His bit about not caring if there is only one person in the install base is absolutely rubbish coming from a financial standpoint. You don't just say that "Boy, console Y has an install base of 9 - the engineers who worked on it, and their wives. But you know what? I bet DOA12 would look 'HAWT' on that console, so guys, let's get to it! Quality FTW!"

From a designer/developer standpoint numbers are irrelevant, I guess. However, if Mr Hayashi would like to continue eating food instead of his shirt, he had better look into numbers or at least have someone who does that for him (which he probably does).

Bottom line is, everyone who works on a game for a living needs to see the paycheck at the end of the month, and unless you are working for a philantropist who couldn't give a rat's ass about profit and is in it just for the hell of it, everyone plays the numbers game.

Little guys can also develop games and not get squeezed out, but you have to be careful what kind of game you are developing. As an example, you can probably get away with Meteos for the PS3, make it a top-selling game, and spend little in ways of development costs (it's not like Meteos needs fancy 2048x2048 textures and motion capturing). It's the people that make Resistance- or Motostorm-type games that really need to worry about getting your money back after two-plus years of toil.

A thing a lot of people don't seem to get is that a business case has to be made in order for a game to be made. All business cases basically boil down to

([Cost of Development] + [Marketing Cost]) X (1.0 + [Return on Investment]) < [Expected Return]

Now, how they calculate each of these values is largely dependant on the publisher but your expected return will always be directly related to the size of a userbase of a console. Very few publishers are willing to bet $20 Million on the assumption that 10% of the users will buy a game ...

Certainly, there are some (high profile) developers who basically have the power to choose whatever platform they want but most developers do not have this luxury.

Would it be wrong to call those comments from Team Ninja Fanboy nonsense?

 I think it's more a matter of return on an investment, see when Iown a buisness I'd hope to operate in the green not in the red. It's not an "excuse" it's a REASON chances are your single game is not going to sell a 600$ system. Let's be realistic, VERY few games are system sellers in and of themselves. Nobody wants to be the first guy out there because if nobody follows you're dead in the water with nobody to blame but your poor choice.

 It's ALL about the number and production costs. As it stands Wii has it all over the PS3 in both ways. Like it or not, for now it's the truth.

Maybe Team Ninja are just lucky that they have proposed games that will sell well enough for their finance department to pass and not have a collective heart attack while hearing Mr Hayashi's pitch.

Then again, I'd like to see Team Ninja get the green light for their "It plays like Ninja Gaiden, but instead of a ninja you control Barbie - and you even get to ride on ponies while searching for Ken, her true love, and all this utilizing motion-capture with Catherine Zeta-Jones (dyed blond) acting as Barbie and Owen Wilson (with a nosejob - we pay for the surgery, cuz we don't look at budget constraints!!!111) acting as Ken, in full FMV glory" concept. 

Fanboy may not be the right word. Delusional, perhaps!

Everybody's glossing over the fact that he mentions the situation was the same on the xbox. Where would the xbox be without team ninja's help?  DOA and ninja gaiden greatly improved the appeal of the original xbox for me and it wasn't because it was the xbox...It was my familiarity with the titles. Why be so quick to discredit what this guy is saying?

I understand what he's saying, and I give him credit for focusing on just making a quality game.  That said...I don't understand why it has to be just on PS3...if it's such a great game, share the love with the Wii and 360, or at least 360.

Hate to say it, but you can not port a 360/PS3 game to Wii. You can only port Wii to PS3/360. But then agian, you can port SNES games to a GBA, and N64 games to a DS.

Can you make a N64 game run on a GameBoy? Can you make a GameCube game run on the GBA?

That is why you cant port a PS3/360 game to the Wii, the power diffrence is too wide. They would have to build a totally diffrent game for the Wii. (at least the graphics engine) Unless it's a massive company/publisher, that is litterally like makeing 2 full games.

EDIT: it could be ported to 360.