I don't see why you'd compare the price of development of an 'A+' games on PS3 to an 'average' game on Wii.  By extension of that, I could compare the cost of an 'average' game on PS3 to an 'A+' game on Wii and say "Look, development costs on Wii and PS3 are exactly the same". Of course, that would be far from the truth.

@ the link, that's great.  I'm happy for you that Wii-U is easy to develop for.  What does it have to do with cost of developing games for the Wii?  

The 500k statement was the analasys for the Wii's A+ games.

The cost of a top quality game on the Wii is around 10 million. I know that Red Steel 2 was 12 million and that was one of the biggest 3rd party investments in the Wii this gen. That is still lower than the low end cost of the 360/PS3's development.

Red Steel sold a little over 500k so I would say it broke even.

And how does that contradict anything I said there? ME3 is a PS360 game, not a Wii game. 

They're used to a system slightly more powerful than the Xbox/GC where they only had to sell "150-300k for the average game", right?

Now, if you want to pretend that the average Wii U game will break even at anywhere near that amount, go right ahead but don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

And your link, to go onto another subject. 

"Out of the seven games we are planning to launch, five games are ports, so those are games for which there is a quite small re-investment to do," said a Ubisoft executive during an investor call. "The two games that are original are ZombiU and Rayman, so those ones, of course, are more expensive." "We are not talking about games today, like we were spending on Ghost Recon or Assassin's Creed," Ubisoft execs explained. "So they are much smaller in terms of cost. As we've always said, when there is such innovation, the need is not to have big a production value but to concentrate on the innovation. This is what we are trying onRayman and on ZombiU.

Quite a useless statement in this context then. Ports are cheap, original games are more expensive, and of course Rayman or ZombiU will not incur the same development budget as a AAA game like Assassin's Creed on the PS360 did as they are smaller early titles focused on the unique gamepad.

On the subject of the gamepad are you telling me that, a system where devs are encouraged to use a second touch screen that other consoles lack, meaning porting the game to PS360 or even PC will be impossible or unfeasible without modifications to the game itself (one of the reasons I've heard so often that ZombiU or Rayman for example, will not be released to the PS360) is somehow Nintendo making things easier for devs?

I suppose Ubisoft should be happy that Nintendo have given them a system where their two original games cannot be ported without changes to the game itself, how generous of them and very beneficial to the developers who wish to minimize risk. 

the Naughty Dog said uncharted 1-2 cost $20 million to make. Gears of war 1 and 2 cost something like $10-$20 million to make.

Heavy rain, was a very small budget game, made by a very small studio, with not much of a track record. it was only expected to sell around 500k. so it probably cost less than $10 million to make.

GT4? do you mean GTA4 or GT5?. GTA IV cost like $100 million to make. incredible expensive, and it sold a ton, like 30 million plus lots of DLC.. GT5 cost $60 million to make also extremely expensive. but it has sold over 13 million (GT5+ GT5 prologue), and a couple million DLCs. so also very profitable.

You made the 500k statement long after you'd made the initial "150-300k" statement with no indication what it was for, though.  But no matter.  All I'm saying is, next time you may want to be clearer when you say something like that, not comparing the costs of a high-budget PS3 game to the costs of a average-budget Wii game.

By the way, you claimed Uncharted 2 cost 50 million to develop earlier.  Incorrect:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/uncharted-sequel-costing-usd-20-million

It cost $20 million.  So again, about double what a high end Wii game would cost.  Which would indeed make your 500k number correct if a PS360 game on a $20 million budget would break even at a million sold.  I won't argue with that one!

Gears of War costed $20m to make.
Unreal Tournament III was basically a multiplayer only game (thus much cheaper), which was developed and released for PC first and then ported later to PS3 and then 360.

They certainly made money with the console versions.

I'm sorry but that's absolute rubbish, there are only 5-10 videogames in existence that cost 50 million or above (or slightly below) to make and one of them is Shenmue on the dreamcast, one is APB a pc game, two of them are Two Human and Halo 3, 360 games. 

Find me a source that says Uncharted 2 or Heavy Rain cost anywhere near that much to make. (You can't) 

Lol, now I've read Kresnik's post he was spot on "Don't just accept by apology and move on, feel free to just start yet another argument." 

Now I'm taking the bait. Silly me. 

Shush, I was trying to use it to illustrate a point about game design, not development costs!  Don't you have pre-order charts to be fixing!?

Also that's great and all about Gears of War, but what did it have to do with my post?

edit: Ooh, is it because they're made by the same studio?  Ic.

actually i think gears of war 1 cost closer to $10 million to make.

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/27009224epic sure knows how to make quality while cheap games.

epic sure knows how to keep a low budget while making a quality game

truth