| Shane said: Let's assume that Wii costs half as much to develop for, and let's say that the cost of a game on Wii is $5 million. So EA gets one game for $5 million. They then develop a game for PS3 for a cost of $10 million. They follow that up with a port to 360 for 10% of the original cost. That makes the cost of development for each game $5.5 million. They then port it to the PC for a similar percentage. That drops the cost of development for each game to $4 million. Aside from the fact that the Wii version is likely to have worse sales, which is cheaper again? |
Well Publishers and Developers have been claiming it is 2 to 4 times as expensive to develop for the PS3 or XBox 360 but we can stick to your 2 times number ...
$6 Million to develop the graphical assets and technology which will likely be shared across the Wii, PS3 and PSP ... We will assume $1 Million for platform specific tweeks so each version will have cost the publisher $3 Million. $12 Million to develop the graphical assets and technology for the PC, PS3 and XBox 360 versions ... We will once again assume $1 Million for platform specific tweeks so each version will have cost the publisher $5 Million.
The userbase of the PS2, PSP and (soon enough) Wii will be larger than any of the PS3, XBox 360 and PC gamers (who buy games) which would imply that you should at least see the PS2, PSP and Wii sell similar levels of software as the PS3, XBox 360 and PC
