"Going by numbers of Wii's sold, 500,000 is not a very impressive number."

Only if you believe attach rate matters, and PS1, PS2, and DS developers clearly didn't, so they don't on the Wii either.

It really depends on the game.  Super Mario Galaxy requires a lot more then Big Brain Acadamy.

It's the same sort of thing with HD consoles.  It really depends on the game, and a lot of HD games, they just shorten the game, so it lasts 9 hours instead of 30 hours, and thus costs less to make.

Remember, these guys arent spending much to make those games, when the wii start getting big budget games, it will be in the same situation or close to the HD mind set.

I would say so. i worry though about a game like conduit.

High voltage has about 120 employees. They created the quantrum 3 engine, and this game that we know of has been in development for about a year and a half. The only other games I'm aware they have been working on are those three wiiware games (ign previewed the Animales game back in June). So you can tell that i'd say 75% of the workforce works on the conduit. If that game does not make 1 million worldwide it's obvious that it wont turn a profit. ALso consider they are not publishing it themselves and that a portion will go to sega.

Does anyone know what the average pay of a senior engineer, game designer, artist, sound engineer and so forth are? Just take that into consideration and It's going to be tough for the conduit to make bank.

Well 500k on every console is a decent result, however on the Wii development costs are significantly lower so financialy its usually a great success, like other said developers are usually very happy with sales around it ex. Suda and NMH or THQ and De Blob (they must be pretty exited now since the sales have picked up)

About Madworld it will definately reach 500k, it's as interesitng as it gets, SEGA will advertise their game and gamers will buy it, 1 million is certainly a possibiltiy.

About The Conduit this is the most hyped Wii Game from 3rd party studio, it's bee na talking point for months, supported by majority of gamers and HVS has been doing pretty good job, if the final product is decent/good enough it will definately sell more then one million.

 Only 120 emplyees?!! Only 2 years to make?!! HA! thats nothing compared to Halo2 with over 300 manpower and cost 40 million to make and is on the original xbox. And with the manpower and money spent I bet the game takes atleast 3 years  to do. j/k

but seriously, the conduit will be fine!

Depends. A normal game made for normal costs with normal expectations would be considered a success at 500,000 on any console.

Some games have extremely high development costs (MGS4) and I suspect would lose money if they didn't break 1m. However, the Wii games are still cheap enough to develop that I don't think this would be a problem. Some games are cheap enough to make that they can turn a profit at even lower numbers (Zack & Wiki supposedly needed only to sell 300k to turn a profit).

Other games have a very high profile, and often a long history, like Mario and Zelda. If they sold just 500k, it might be profitable but would probably be considered a giant disappointment.

more often than not, 500k sales is considered a success.

Surely the majority of any console audience won't buy any game, since 50% attach rates are extremely rare, but I guess you mean that only a very small part of Wii's audience actually would care about these games.

I wonder who bought 1.5 million copies of RE4 or 5 million copies of Zelda. There clearly is a "hardcore" gaming audience on Wii. I fully expect the Conduit to sell a million.MadWorld is far more niche, but should approach 500k.

On average we can say that about $20-$30 per sold game goes to the publisher, which means for a million selling game some $20 -30 million revenue. An average Wii game should be around 8 million to make, high budget ones like the Conduit maybe $10-12 million.

So on average I'm sure 400k will be approximally the break even point for average budget Wii games, 1 million for HD games. Obviously there's lots of space around that. NMH will be a lot cheaper, while MGS4 a lot more expensive. 500k sales on a Wii game will be some 10-15 million in Revenue, that's a decent return on invvestment.

Yeah but is conduit going to sell almost 3 mil in the first week?

My point is that the Conduit is going to have a hard time turning profit unless they blow past a million.

I think that it will blow past a mil and settle around 2 mil worldwide.