This is dumbest post I have ever seen here. If this post is true, then most HD games could never make a profit since they cost so much more to develop than Wii games.

Um, a lot don't.

I remember when Wii dev kits were distributed NamcoBandai said a big budget Wii game would cost about 4-mill to develope. Now I'm sure that the price has risen in some cases. However theirs no doubt that a Wii game can be developed for about 4-5 mill or even cheaper. It also doesn't take nearly as long to develope a Wii title. Alot of those shovel ware games are probubly developed for as little as a couple hundred thousand to a mill by recycling the engine and sound effects and in some cases level design and character design.

I'd say my best guess would be a medium budget Wii title breaking into profitability after 200,000 copies sold. According to Patcher the publisher makes up to 36$ per title and I'm guessing Wii would be about ten dollars less so that is 26$ per copy. Doing the math you make more then 4-mill when you sell 200,000 copies.

Now we know bigger titles like The Conduit were used to bring us new technologies. Now The Conduit may have cost more then 4-mill to develope I don't know maybe as high as 8-9. However it sold over 300,000 copies so it would have made over 6-million in reveniew. However HighVoltage is using the engine recycled for The Conduit 2, Grinder and Tournament of Legends. These titles will make more then enough money to compensate for lower then hoped Wii sales.

That being said budget titles can be made really quickly and appeal to a vast audience. You can flop a couple budget titles (Shovelware) then one is a mediocre hit and suddenly you've broken even or profited.

However I think big budget games like RedSteel2 will fail to break even. Then again UbiSoft said they'd consider it a success if it sold more then 500,000 that would generate 10-mill or more in reveniew!

@Joelcool: I'd remember HVS stating somewhere that Conduit cost 5M to develope.

@OP: It shouldn't be surprising at this point of time that people read statements as they wish.
However, the reason why Reggie makes the statement is to point out how low sales you need to make profit on Wii. All the whiners on message boards and such likely don't get what he really said, but the people who invest money into game development definately read it very differently.

It's easy to forget all the realities, when looking only the top ten sellers list and doing it from the outside, when in reality only the top 20-50 games on the competing platforms have turned profit.

Going by what EA said the average HD game needs 1.1 million copies sold between both consoles to break even, and the budgets for Wii games on average are 1/4th that of HD games.  Figure that up how you will.

OT: Reggie is obviously trying to encourage publishers to come to Wii, of course it was misquoted and used against him, but what he tried to say is this "Hey you advertise and market so hard to just reach that break even point at 1 million on the HD systems, why not come over here where doing that will already net you a profit by the time you hit a million"

Reggie is verbally aggressive this year.






As for his statement, I can agree somewhat.

Reggie is always being misquoted....and ends up with a situation that looks like he has his foot in his mouth. Overall he should keep the PR to a minimum, because it isn't working from Nintendo of America's side. I'd actually go on to say I like Cammie more than him, although she is more misinformed than him.

As for the Wii games profiting and such, I'll drop a couple tidbits I have picked up over the years:

• EA CEO John Ricitiello said in January 2009: "Development is typically a third to a fourth as much for a Wii game then it is for a PS3 or an Xbox 360 game.
• Nintendo's own Reggie Fils-Aime states developing games for the Nintendo DS is cheap, costing only a few thousand dollars to develop and only needing to sell 100k units to make a profit. Wii games require about $5-10 million in the average case, including marketing costs. He asserts PS3 and X360 games need much more resources, from $20 million up to a staggering $50 million with sales of 1.3 to 1.5 million units to make money on them.
• Namco Bandai Holdings President Takeo Takasu said rising development costs for next-generation games mean companies need to sell at least 500,000 copies in order to make a profit. Mr. Takasu said graphics for PS3 games can cost nearly $9 million to create — more than double the price tag for Wii titles
• Jagex states that Casual games, especially on the Wii, tend to have higher profit margins and thus are able to have price reductions while still making a healthy profit
• exact licensing fee varies based on the manufacturer (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft), as well as any deals they may give a publisher, but it can generally be anywhere from $3 to $10 per unit.'Wholesalers typically pay around $30 per game and with the costs of getting the goods to the wholesalers, any co-op advertising or marketing, and return of good contingencies being roughly $14 per game, the publisher is going to typically get $16 for every unit sold (This is for PS3/360 games; Wii games are lower in each section)
• “Fortunately, it doesn’t take nearly as many people to make games for these platforms. It takes maybe 30 people to make a Wii game"- Rich Hilleman: Chief Creative of EA
• This is just my personal educated guess, but I think Madworld cost $9-$12.5 million, while The Conduit cost $5-$8 million total (HVS had to fund the project themselves initially)

No way did MadWorld cost $9-12m for development, it's pretty low tech, the assets are incredibly simple (both models and textures), it had a fairly small team and the whole thing was made in about a year. If Sega was paying that much, then Platinum was robbing them. I would say $6-7m max, though the audio budget was probably proportionately high within it.

I would say Bayonetta was likely also pretty low budget for a HD game, probably around $15-18m. It's gorgeous, but that's due more to the art design and nothing in the game seems particularly expensive imo. The PS3 version not being developed in parallel or inhouse might've raised costs more than normal though.

Weirdly, out of all Platinum's games (released at least, Vanquish looks pretty high end), I'd say Infinite Space seems the highest budget for it's platform. Lots of cinemas, nice 3D and an insane amount of content. I'm not sure what average DS budgets are, but IS looks more expensive than most in about every facet.

Which convinces me developers often have a really irrational hatred for the Wii (I refuse to spend less money to make my games) and/or they are using HD graphics as a crutch (I refuse to expose any flaws in this game design by not throwing as much detail and shiny effects in there as I can).

The Conduit shows the Wii won't let you hide problems with those, but at least HVS are taking that lesson as a reason to improve. Not sure other developers think so.

@LordTheNightKnight: Actually their reasons make perfect sense on the business side. The model, though, i think is flawed.

Everyone is after a blockbuster, like GTA4 or MW2, and once a game reaches a certain point in sales, releasing the game on the HD platforms, where they are more expensive, simply generate more money.

Looking at the revenue (at retail), a 10 million difference in dev costs is offset when the game sells its first million.