I can't agree with that.

*looks at ubisoft* are they unlocking the N64's from within the Wii? it's not even "the second gamecube" anymore. their graphics are getting worse and worse; as seems to be a recurring theme these days. Developers aren't even pushing the techonoly boundaries, like they did each day on PS2 (a much harder to develop and master console); but among these... the worse must be ubisoft indeed.

I still want my market shift for Wii quality titles to bloom, not cheap excuses for publishers; or rather cheap excuses are what these publishers are turning into.

Banking?

Assassin's Creed at 7 million sold

Rainbow Six Vegas series at 4.5 million sold

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter series at 3.8 million units sold.

Banking may have been a proper term a year or two ago, but I think the more correct term is "payoff".

And they aren't the only developers who are enjoying a very nice windfall on the HD consoles:

GTAIV at 8.5 million and runningn

CoD4 at 9.3 million

Halo 3 at eight million

The list goes on...  I'm starting to think that HD gaming isn't that hard of a sell to developers seeing sales numbers like this.

Even then I don't see how this list provided conflicts with my use of the word "banking". Perhaps you're just being over sensitive and looking to pick a fight. When you show me a list of games and their profits, then you can speak up.

As said above if you put the effort behind something it will sell. These games are not selling big because they're HD, but because they have money put behind them, its simle logic. The big problem here is the dimished profits returned by HD gaming. And with no evidence of HD gaming becomming anymore affordable anytime soon, hypotheticals are all you can offer.

Yeah, none of those games turned a profit.  :/

Is that what I said? The problem is not so much in turning a profit, but how much profit is being turned. Companies aren't making the money back on games they did last generation due to the amount of resources required to make just one game and the incidental limitation of the number of games they can make.

If they were really making so much money off of HD gaming, then why are they so afraid to take chances with games that aren't proven franchises or work with more than just a handful of genres? Oh, because they sell you say? Well that's unfortunately the kind of thinking that has led to Video Gaming reaching this bottleneck of diversity and its only getting narrower. Even if the Developers can keep making money like this, something is going to have to give sooner or later.

And you know that how?

Or is that speculation?

I'm sure games cost more to make, but you don't know how much, and you don't know how much profit they do make.

But I'm done.  

You're doing that all "HD gaming is killing videogames" B.S. again, and I don't feel like it.

DMeisterJ:

Sure, but for each success, there's plenty of failures too:

Stranglehold (0.4m):
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=7262
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=7261

Ubi can't be too happy with Haze's initial sales (0.2m), it's never going to reach the levels of the games you posted. Ubi has said in the past that on average, 360/PS3 games require 1.3m sales to break even. Haze will be lucky to get there:
http://www.vgchartz.com/games/game.php?id=7253

HD consoles are not the guarantee of profitability that the best selling games you've cherry picked would make it seem.

As to the OT, I agree, I was initially pretty happy with Ubisoft's commitment to Wii games, but was quickly turned back from purchasing any more. I held back from RRR2 simply because it looked like a quick cash in, and the future seems just as bleak. Shoddy work Ubisoft. :|

EDIT:

Here's a link where Ubisoft said that it takes about 1.3m sales to break even: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3164228

Several developers have already stated that developing for the HD consoles is 4-5 times more expensive than development for the Wii and anywhere from 2-4 times more expensive than development in general for games last generation. Though I should know from your avoidance to adress my reponse in its entirety that your cherry picking your cop out.

I'm sorry your hit-and-run attack didn't play out like you had hoped, better luck next time.

Well yeah. Assassain's Creed is the exception, not the rule for ubisoft. They have as many misses on HD consoles as they do hits.

Hell on PS3 they only have one decent game sales wise. They just aren't that great a company. They basically have to rely on Tom Clancy to sell their games. With the notable exceptions of Assassain's Creed and Red Steel.

Well and Rayman... but that's also a brand name thing. 

I'm not too sure if development costs will go down the way you're expecting them to go down ...

Some developers have the luxury that a lot of their artistic assets can be reused every year because the content of the game doesn't really change (sports games and world war 2 shooters have this advantage) but most game developers will face increased expectations, and a requirement for new gameplay experiences and new environments with each new iteration of their game; this will result in the size of development teams remaining (roughly) the same, and the development cycle taking (roughly) as long, which will result in games costing (roughly) the same to develop.

A way to think about this is if it takes you 4 man years of labour to produce a racing track in your HD game today, it will still take you 3 to 4 man years of labour to produce a racing track in your HD game tomorow, and if you release a game with 16 race tracks today your customers will want your game to have at least 16 new race tracks tomorow.

Beyond that, development costs of games have in the past tended to grow (on average) as the generation continued because the projects (on average) grew in scope.

Your last comment "PC is a different story as the coding has basically been the same for ages and all they have to do is make graphics prettier 99% of the time. " is entirely false, and can be demonstrated by simply looking at how regularly PC games move upto the latest and greated game engine; developers jumped from the Quake 3/Unreal Tournament engine to the Unreal 2 engine, then to the Doom 3/Source engine, and now more and more are moving towards the crytech engine. Few of the engines maintain backwards compatibility in their scripting engines which means that all the scripting is tossed whenever you switch engines.