Kyros said: And Wii version sales are still profit, no matter the ratio, so that's a bullshit point. eh no they aren't. You seem to have a NRDF or Nintendo Reality Distortion Field in action. Please deactivate. Wii games cost money to develop as well. Crappy PS2 ports cost less, good Wii games cost more. I am willing to bet that a Nintendo Wii game (at least one of the good ones not cheap Wii Music) costs as much as most HD games to develop. In other words you get what you pay for.

You cant be serious look at the game like Super Mario Galaxy (one of the best games this Gen) and compare it to the costs of Halo 3 or GTA IV.

Look at the titles like No More Heroes, De Blob , Fire Emblem they really dont have to sell that much to be profitable, then compare them to the HD titles like Haze or Too Human, Lair which were financial bombs, games with those sales do make profit on Nintendo platform, according to developers (Suda, THQ all claimed that they games were successful).

HD development costs are extremely high, and apart from the blockbuster titles, not many other games do sell well (just look at every western company financial report) and the fate of Mirrors Edge etc. etc. etc. It is development costs that have put so many companies in red. Wii games cost much less then HD titles .

Lolcislaw said: Kyros said: And Wii version sales are still profit, no matter the ratio, so that's a bullshit point. eh no they aren't. You seem to have a NRDF or Nintendo Reality Distortion Field in action. Please deactivate. Wii games cost money to develop as well. Crappy PS2 ports cost less, good Wii games cost more. I am willing to bet that a Nintendo Wii game (at least one of the good ones not cheap Wii Music) costs as much as most HD games to develop. In other words you get what you pay for. You cant be serious look at the game like Super Mario Galaxy (one of the best games this Gen) and compare it to the costs of Halo 3 or GTA IV. Look at the titles like No More Heroes, De Blob , Fire Emblem they really dont have to sell that much to be profitable, then compare them to the HD titles like Haze or Too Human, Lair which were financial bombs, games with those sales do make profit on Nintendo platform, according to developers (Suda, THQ all claimed that they games were successful). HD development costs are extremely high, and apart from the blockbuster titles, not many other games do sell well (just look at every western company financial report) and the fate of Mirrors Edge etc. etc. etc. It is development costs that have put so many companies in red. Wii games cost much less then HD title

u maybe wrong about that because many of those games cost least that high budget ps2 games.

FFX - 30 million budget.

FF12- 40 million in budget.

and those HD games probably not be half that except for too human.

Jo21 he still isn't wrong, the two games you used as an example fit under what he categorized as block busters... unless FF (roman numeral) aren't block busters anymore.

HD development costs if you want Killzone2 looks. If devs want to make cheaper worse looking games, they can achieve Wii looks on PS360 much cheaper than on Wii (no need to optimize ANYTHING)
Likewise Wii games that look good and have similar features than PS360 games will have much higher costs than a de Blob where you are a blob that colors boxes. If you believe that Super Mario Galaxy was cheaper to develop than Lair you dream.

I mean of course No More Heroes did cost less than GTA4, but it did cost much less than GTA San Andreas as well.

Kyros, you jumbled up something there.

HD is a resolution standard, Wii can not generate images in HD.

By defacto this lowers all costs for anything developed on Wii versus its HD counter-part.

Your just jumbling up tid-bits from every possible location then making a conclusion that you wanted to hit from the get go.

Example: Bananas are yellow but green when not ripe and oranges are yellow too but green when not ripe, so lettuce must be green when not ripe!

Kyros said: HD development costs are extremely high HD development costs if you want Killzone2 looks. If devs want to make cheaper worse looking games, they can achieve Wii looks on PS360 much cheaper than on Wii (no need to optimize ANYTHING) Likewise Wii games that look good and have similar features than PS360 games will have much higher costs than a de Blob where you are a blob that colors boxes. If you believe that Super Mario Galaxy was cheaper to develop than Lair you dream. I mean of course No More Heroes did cost less than GTA4, but it did cost much less than GTA San Andreas as well.

 

Factor 5 (the developer of Lair) is one of the companies who talks about how much more expensive it is to produce a similar HD console game than it is to produce a Wii (PS2/XBox/Gamecube) game; so I think you're the one who is delusional if you think that many Wii games will ever approach the development cost of Lair.

Beyond that, it is possible for developers to control their development costs and to produce games with more modest visuals ... but you also said " ... a PS360 game that looks like a Wii game would be ~ 0"

 

From what I can tell, your entire philosophy towards gaming is that any company who can not afford to produce a game with a $20,000,000 to $40,000,000 budget should die out rather than to focus on something other than visuals. Personally, I really enjoyed games like Okami, Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Katamari, Killer 7, Viewtiful Joe, and several other games which will never approach 1 Million units sold; and I would much rather have those developers focus on the quality of game and stick to more modest visuals (potentially being released on the Nintendo DS, PSP, or Wii) than to have these developers go bankrupt because they can't receive the sales of another generic FPS.

I said that Super Mario most likely approaches the costs of Lair. This is hardly "many Wii games". The problem is there are simply not that many non-Nintendo big budget Wii games around so the discussion is a bit mute. This doesn't only include graphics but all the other nice features expected from up-to date games on PC/PS3/360 like huge multiplayer support or the HUGE environment that was delivered by games like GTA4 or Assassin's.



Exactly this is something called "competition". There seem to be enough developers around who deliver great games, awesome graphics and make enough money. If HD developers in general couldn't make a living, they would make cheaper games. But since many developers can succeed those that can not die.



??? If they want to focus on something other than visuals and this produces a better product people will buy it. As I said you always can make worse graphics, this can be done on PS3 or Wii. Besides the Wii doesn't seem to be exactly the boon for innovative amazing third-party titles like Okami or shadow of the colossus so I do not get your point.

Setting the DirectX or OpenGL setting on 640*480 instead of 1280*720 makes games cheaper? Wow that's cool. By that definition 10 year old PC games that did run in 1024*768 must have cost 20million?

I think you should make a little research here.

And you posted no proof of that assertion. Also, Super Mario Galaxy is not only a high-quality game but also a game with lots of content. Does Lair have that much content (levels, etc)?

I didn't. On the other hand the proof that was posted that all Wii games are cheaper than all HD games was also missing. I think its a good guess though, the prime Nintendo franchises take many years to develop and likely have a rather big team so they will be slightly more expensive than a cheese-burger.



Again you are completely correct. But that's the point isn't it? Yes higher res textures, more developer hours for better graphical effects and more detailled objects cost money and some of them are only possible because HD consoles provide the power to for example make textures more detailed.

On the other hand modern PS360 games also have things like motion capturing for character movement, facial animations for conversations, expensive musical scores and sound effects for better cinematic sound, good multiplayer support with huge beta-testing phases , amazing cutscenes etc. pp. and these things would cost as much money on the Wii. That's called progress. Games that have lots of content on Wii like SMG will also be expensive. Not as expensive as a game with the same features on HD consoles but that's not the point. Normally good developers have sales expectations, which results in a budget they have. In a second phase they will decide on the features they can implement with that budget.

I will readily acknowledge that a new console generation tripped up this planning process and killed some developers who didn't adjust well. On the other hand Lair and Haze and Too Human are bad examples because if the developers would have fallen because of the HD aspect you would expect the underlying games to be good. Perhaps with subpar graphics.