http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/?v=news&p=16574

The development and subsequent sales success of casual games on Nintendo's Wii and DS is an "extremely profitable" business for Ubisoft, according to the company's CEO Yves Guillemot, who told Reuters at the Games Convention in Leipzig last week that these games help to finance the costly development of games for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3.

Guillemot explained that the development of casual games costs anywhere from 1 million euros to 4 million, depending on how many platforms they're being created for. By comparison, a normal Wii game costs about 5 to 10 million euros, while an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 one costs from 10 million to 20 million.

Casual games are expected to contribute 20% of Ubisoft's revenue this year, which is up 10% on last year. Meanwhile, the entire games industry is attracting many more customers which are, according to Guillemot, "going to grow the market tremendously. I expect the market to grow by 50 percent in the next four years," he said, concluding, "It's a very exciting time for all the developers and publishers."

Seems like a decent business model. So by this logic, the more casuals that enter the market and buy up the Wii the better the production value for their 360/PS3 games. Sounds like a win-win.

If I only owned only a Wii I'd rather have them put the money also on Wii games that weren't lower budget casual games.

Is Ubisoft making a PS3, X360 game at the moment?

Kind of a stupid business plan to use cash from profitable games to fund less profitable ones.

What is Ubisoft making in general right now? The only Wii game that I can think of that they have announced is Red Steel 2, but this is off the top of my head with absolutley no research devoted to this discussion.

Alexie, how can you forget about the RABBIDS!!!!

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/4879.html

If you can watch the "Around the world" clips without laughing, I will bow before your inhuman characteristics. ;)

Edit : DHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

:) 

Our most profitable products go to finance our most expensive games.

Seems... logical. Wii games that arn't casual cost half the price as 360 and PS3 games... therefore they don't need money from the casual games to fund them.

I guess you could argue they could not make 360 and PS3 games but it's not really smart for a large company to simplify like that.

 It's not like they're saying "We're only making casual games for the wii!  Those chumps!".  Otherwise they wouldn't mention the development costs for non casual wii games.

I read it more like "we use profits from low-risk projects on Wii to finance high-risk projects on PS3/X360". That would make more sense.