Vgchartz is a unique site, because it deals directly with sales the chances of one of your comments finding its way onto the screen of one of the big publishers is a lot higher than with other sites so I think people in the Nintendo forum especially should be careful of not just what they say but how they say it.

The statement "Wii development is cheap" means something entirely different to publishers. If you consider the total cost of publishing a game, it includes both substantial development and advertising costs as well as the little understood costs of testing, printing and distributing games.

I believe that its important to convey the correct meaning when describing the cost of Wii development to emphasis the correct message. I think what we really need to convey is this "It costs less to produce a high quality Wii game and the returns justify the expense".

Consider the advertising side of things, its an expense which has also increased this generation and as a proportion of total development cost it can easily exceed the ratio on HD games. The fact that they do not advertise substantially may infact be justified. However one thing remains clear that in general quality Wii software sells itself from a word of mouth perspective and the continued sales of some of the better games on the Wii does send a clear message to Publishers that advertisement can definately be justified even if it exceeds the total development budget as it kick starts the sales process and almost definately increases the overall sales for a good game. You need copies in the hands of real people for word of mouth to work and the more the better.

The development side of things is really three major components when discussing Wii the cost of creating Wii games. Coding, multi-media creation and Testing. Multi-media creation has been discussed to death so I won't go into it. Testing and coding go hand in hand and they need to be discussed together.

Testing is the area where the Wii needs the long end of the stick, but its actually getting the short end. Many of the games coming out on the Wii just aren't being tested adequately enough for even an HD game and the Wii actually needs much more than that. If you consider the target, perhaps even expanded market; many game concepts which would be obvious to your average core/lapsed gamer are completely over the head of many of the Wii users. Unfortunately this is compounded by the new user interface and many of the UI mistakes which are obvious to the end users here are repeated ad-nauseum. The mantra "Test early, test often" Isn't being applied often enough or at all. If you wonder why Nintendo games are so good, this is one of the cornerstones of the Nintendo seal of quality. If HD games can justify a markedly higher media creation budget, then the Wii definately justifies a much higher testing budget. It isn't cheap, but its justified.

Whether trying to create an innovative game or just make a great cookie-cutter the games have to be coded in such a way that an alpha build is made early to test key game concepts to ensure they work. The longer the development goes without being able to test core concepts the harder it is to right the ship. This is where testing/development go hand in hand. Because testing is even more important for the Wii, publishers have to drill into their developers the need to have a working concept early in the development process.

The message to publishers is this, Wii development is not cheap but the returns more than justify the cost. Money spent on testing, is always money well spent and the return on investment is a better game which justifies an increased advertisement budget to drive sales of the better game produced. You should know your target market from the feedback in your testing so you should be able target that advertising efficiently and your accountants will thank you for it because in the end a well advertised/conceptualised/tested game will keep the money flowing in for a long time on the Wii and the numbers prove it.

The message to you is this, Wii development is not cheap and it was never cheap. There may be examples of great games produced on the ultra cheap, but they are the exception rather than the rule. The games you actually want to put in your Wii and play have all been well tested, designed and marketed. You are the people who buy the most games for the Wii, talk about Wii games the most with your friends and you are the ones who influence the publishers the most. So I ask that you at least qualify the statement "Wii games are cheap" by saying that the Wii always requires more testing and perhaps more marketing than the publisher is used to and overall however the cost is cheaper than HD games. I don't want to hear that Wii games cost 1/3rd of HD games because that can become a target or goal, and encourages too much corner cutting.

I hope you enjoyed the read, sorry if its a little long. Its a hard concept to cut down to forum readable lengths. Also please post comments, it took a long long time to write so if you read it, good or bad its nice to see some feedback.

What games had a big development cost and a big marketing no made by Nintendo?

Red steel was pretty expensive to make, and i'm sure Monster Hunter and any FF game that will appear on the system will be pretty expensive. I don't really know what good games the wii has,  maybe a wii owner could list them so we can make a decent list.  

But many games on Nintendo systems take the extra cash of development on the HD systems and spend it on marketing for the game, so in the end the cost is about the same for each game.  I'm pretty sure ubisoft made some sort of reference to massive marketing to push there shit games.

Take some games developed and released whichwere improved by an emphasis on product testing.

Gears of War 1, Bioshock - Both critically acclaimed with 94/96% metacritic averages. They were made with relatively smaller teams than a lot of other games released this generation on the same consoles even. They both also had extensive help from Microsoft in terms of testing the games and I know at least in Bioshocks case, the result was a vastly better game. They had issues with late testing and it was a miracle the game turned out as well as it did.

Halo 3: Bungie makes a point of having developers sit in with testers to "Help them understand the issues that players faced and to motivate them to make a better game" Halo is one of the biggest shooter franchises in existance in no small part due to their extensive testing which made the game fun for as many people as possible.

Diablo 2/Left 4 Dead: Games by two of the landmark PC AAA developers Blizzard and Valve. They were tested often and early and in the end it forced the developers to make sure that the games had almost infinite replayability. In Diablos case it was simplified combat and quick rewards which kept the players coming back for more and with Left 4 Dead they were likely inspired by the testing to make the AI governor to give themselves and the end users a different experience every time.

The Sims: Once it was in testing the game evolved far beyond its initial concept, and became one of the best selling games of all time, in a large part due to the influence of the female testers and how the developers created the personalities and relationships of the sims.

And finally on a personal note. One of my aquantainces was actually in one of the DS advertisements for one of the Zelda games, im sorry I forgot which one. When he was filming the advertisement he was playing the game and the developers were constantly looking for feedback from him. They were extremely interested in his user experience even though he had never used a DS before in his life! They were there to do a job but that didn't stop them from trying to get feedback on the game.

One thing which seperates the AAA developers from your typical average developers and shovelware, is how well and how much they playtest their products before release. This is an area which needs extra attention on the Wii so im highlighting it again, its extremely expensive but extremely worth it.

So basically you're saying that us Wii gamers might see better games if we emphasize better return on investment rather than cheap costs in our language.

Do you work in PR?

red steel sold a million copies, so i'm quite sure they made back what they spent, and then some

If I worked anywhere it would be marketing!

Since The Wii gamers here are more influential as its a sales site so the language you use can be important. Its not just what you say but how you convey meaning. For someone whos writing out a multi-million dollar cheque cheap has a different meaning to someone whos looking for the cheapest deal on a computer part.