You don't seem to understand reality... let me S P E L L it out for you.

Xbox360/PS3 market - Farcry 2 is > by far than the Wii market. Almost 1.7-1 if you discount Wiisports and Wiiplay.

The Xbox360/PS3/PC market is over 2 times larger than the Wii.

The Wii is the biggest selling console but thats =/= to biggest software market.

@Squilliam

Gears of War didn't cost $10 million to make. That's PR crap. They didn't account for marketing, distribution, manufacturing and a dozen other issues like them using their own expensive game engine for example. And even still, that's by far the exception, not the rule. Gears 2 won't cost less, actually, since they've redone almost all the art assets (a major chunk of the total costs). Oh, and they don't get all $60.00 per game sold.

Ubisoft stated that average development across all 3 HD systems (PS3/X360/PC) costs $18.8m-$28.2m. Haze would fall into the latter end and that's not including marketing budgets.

Free Radical will get $27 per sale. That means 1 million units sold is required just to break even. Wonder how much Ubisoft paid Korn for promotional materials?

If Ubisoft pays $20 million in marketing and retailer shelf space, it will need to sell about 3 million units to get their money back.

My how this thread has grown.

I'm glad that people have been taking their anger out on me in my absence, shows that I was missed.

Hrm...

@ Soriku

Who has proved me wrong? What did I have to be wrong about?

If the people running the numbers/projections still aren't spending money on the Wii games its probably because of 2 reasons. A, they may consider the expensive unjustified relative to expected (Return On Investment) for that game or B, They see greater investment as leading to a poorer ROI. They spend money where the greatest ROI is expected to be. If they aren't spending the money then they don't believe its there to be made or they believe that they can get a greater ROI investing it somewhere else.

The above makes more sense than trying to guesstimate the cost of game production. Look above.

That a subject is old when it's not even been around for a day. You were insisting that last night, when the first threads started in the afternoon (Pacific time). That's not old. That's you wanting it to be old. 

@Squilliam

I know A because Ubisoft said so.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18389

I know B because Forbes broke down the figures for Gears of War which shows some standards in cost development.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3156044

I know C because of A and B.

Then there is D because I know the industry pretty well and didn't need A or B personally but provided them for your own benefit as validation.


As for why Wii doesn't get big budget games, that's simple. They take 2-3 years of planning and development. How long has Wii been out? 18 months. Prior to launch publishers had Wii written off completely and had no big budgets allocated for it. Resource allocation and long term planning from 2005-2006 are the answer.

How was I wrong about Ubi?

I had no problem with bashing PS3 Ubi games, but bashing Ubi games in general.

Not again DMJ, no one here is bashing Ubisoft games in general only the crap they developed for the Wii, thats all. Is it really that hard to understand?

 Exactly.

Nintendogs = Effort, budget, quality.

Dogz Wii = Souless, cash in, low budget, exploitation.

And they wonder why only 1st party games sell well.