There seems to be a fundamental problem with the thinking behind the posts on this thread.  Porting a game from 360 to PS3 or vise versa isn't going to make it just as financially viable to publishers as doing Wii exclusives.  Why?

A) Games for 360/PS3 demand the highest graphical resolution to be competitive.  For the Wii great graphics do not equate to better sells.  So while I truly do want to see some graphically outstanding games on the Wii, most games will go with simplier graphics (EA Playground/Boogie) and thus be even more cost effective. Innovative fun sells on the Wii, not graphics and fun is a whole lot cheaper to produce.

B) At current sales rates the Wii will surpass the COMBINED total of 360/PS3 sometime next year.  That makes getting 300k on Wii easier than 700k on 360/PS3. (yes, I know, price cuts and AAA games will dramatically increase 360/ps3 sales by this holiday season - I'll believe it when I see it, and even then it'll only delay when Wii will surpass their combined total)

C) In case your game bombs, it's a lot easier to take if it's a Wii game than a 360/PS3 game.

D) Publishers can expand their base on the Wii (look at EA Sports' Family Play feature), to capture all new customers. With the 360/PS3 it's limited to the same core gamer crowd that's been in steady decline for years.

The good news is that games made for the core gamers will continue to sell better on the 360/PS3 and for publishers who want to make those games, they'll continue to do so profitably.  But expect EA/Ubisoft/ other large publishers and ALL Japanese publishers to increasingly support Wii over 360/PS3 in the next couple years.

Established franchises will probably keep on 360/PS3, with some exceptions because of demographics, and most new IPs will go to Wii, I think. The risk is a lot lower, and the profits may be bigger.

There are definitely still benefits to making games that are 360/PS3/PC multi-platform, but I expect exclusive titles on these systems to all but evaporate within two years.

It also means that Microsoft and Sony are going to continue fighting viciously over the same consumers; with third party exclusives out of the picture, the distinctions will be marketing, first party exclusives (with both companies buying up developers and/or paying for publishing and marketing), and the system's prices will be cut, cut, cut.

All of those things cost a ton of money. Red ocean indeed.

Considering that many 360 developers are licensing outside game engines which should reduce costs significantly I wonder if they're taking that into account as well as the higher price point for 360 games.  Or what about additional content sold after the fact which is an additional revenue stream for 360 game developers?

Also the original article mentioned Wiiware as a tool when it's basically similar to Xbox Live Arcade so what's the incentive for major third parties who rely on major boxed titles and not small arcade games for the majority of their income?

And the 7.5 million cost he quoted was for what would amount to party/mini/casual games or similar titles, the same titles that put them in direct competition with some of Nintendo's biggest franchises and ones that are coming out from Nintendo, especially considering Nintendo themselves have said they're focusing on the casual gamer.  I seem to remember people posting on here bragging about the staggering number of titles Nintendo has in development.  I can only imagine how many will be for the casual but I wouldn't doubt a significant amount will be.

Why doesn't he talk about specific genres which have up until now sold poorly on the Wii compared to the 360.  Even taking the difference in installed base it doesn't make up for the fact that some games are selling 3-4 times better on the 360 while others are selling better on the Wii so just basing things on installed base seems to be over simplifying things.

I agree with a lot of this. However: 7.5 million is absolutely not for budget/casual games. That's for major titles. It's basically the same cost as major titles for the PS2.

The cost of marketing a game alone is between 1.5 - 4 million and you think that 7.5 million is for making an epic game and not a minigame/casual game?

Take Red Steel for example, it cost close to 13 million to make, and it represents (at least to me) the kinds of games that developers on the 360 would be bringing to the Wii.

From the article you just posted:

Typical budgets for PlayStation 1 titles ranged from $1.5 to $3 million and grew to average more than $8 million on the PlayStation 2 (2)

This is exactly, precisely in line with what I just said.  

The article in question is talking about development costs before things like marketing, while this thread's article's number of 7.5 million includes marketing.

Oh, I see; I hadn't read the chart, and you are correct. Interesting.