Publishers and developers should turn there heads to Wii a lot more then they do now.

Is Wii development cost the same as it was for GameCube in the old days, when making a full scale core game? Or is it less/more? How much more expensive is it to make a game for Xbox 360 ans PlayStation 3 compared to Wii/GameCube?

I made a thread with my thoughts on this a few days ago:

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=52334

In a nutshell, Western Developers need to stop focusing so much on making high-end, high price, high risk games for the small core gamer group and focus more on mass market games. In particular the vastly under served woman's market.

And yet, they are going in the exact opposite direction. Except Activision and Ubisoft who cater to mass market or other demographics besides young men (WoW,GH, Imagine, My Coach, Petz)

Costs for HD games in particular are so high that profit margins are shrunk to almost nothing. Last gen a game could clear 1m and be highly profitable. Now it needs to make 1m just to cover costs. So a 1m seller brings in great revenue but no profit at all.

It's because they were not thinking about the future. Most of them, and especially EA, ahd franchises that were extremely well received by the public and also sold good, but instead of caring and polishing those, the publishers tried to milk them as much as they could.

If you are a gaming company and you have created a great franchise, you should make it big like Nintendo does or like, for example, Konami did with MGS. It will only take a few years and now-beloved games like Guitar Hero or Call of Duty will be done to death because people can't stand them anymore, there will just be too much of those.

This is why Activison is not in trouble, they just had luck lately with their franchises, but soon enough they will have the same problem as EA, lots of franchises they are doing yearly installments of, but half of them isn't breaking even anymore. Instead of slowing down with development, the companies are trying to create new IP's which is actually great, but they are failing to do it right because they are releasing them too fast and instead of marketing the first one, they already start developing the second installment.


Of course, higher development costs on HD consoles and the misunderstanding of the Wii also helps failing economically, but stopping to milk every franchise until it dries out would really be a lot already.

This is pretty much the scenario we were talking about 1 year ago or longer. Game budgets are growing too fast. Not even raising PS3/360 game prices to 60 $ / € has saved them. It's time to get real about making profits now.

Its been happening for years - publishers losing heaps of cash.

Now that the console "transition" (PS2 is basically dead) is over - its time to consolidate.

Very good points Gamerace and nintendo_fanboy.

So, if I get this right. The reason these devs are struggling is because they don't make their best games for the wii, right?

If I am not wrong, The 360 sells tons of games, especially when it comes to the big games.

I think the problem might be that the HD gamers don't buy crappy games, so when they make them they fail.

The console market is now all but meaningless to Activision.  In their last quarter their financials were 58% of their profit was from PC alone (42% of that from WoW, 16% from other sales). Followed by 13% on Wii, 10% on DS, and PS3 and 360 fighting over the last pathetic little 19%.  If you think either of those consoles mean jack in this industry anymore you are nuts.  PS3 and 360 could drop dead tomorrow and it wouldn't affect Activision much at all.  EA, however, would instantly go out of business.  EA will die long before Activision has to change anything.

Other smaller examples.

Funcom lays off most of their US workforce
Brash Entertainment closes
Cyan Worlds lays off much of their workforce
Flagship Studios Closes

@Bod: you forgot to mention Factor 5 laying off half of their staff.