i was watching the latest episode of Invisible Walls on Gametrailers, and their special guest was Pete Wanat, that I understand is a producer(Wanted, Riddick on xbox, Scarface were mentioned).
The meaty part of the episode was some discussion about third party gams on the Wii, where the guest ventured that a game like Mad World has to sell like 2-3M (!!!) to make it "worth the effort" in his own words. And that if you spend more than 600K-700K on a third party Wii game you're basically going to lose money. The issues that were presented on why big third party development on the Wii could be a bad investment were basically that
1) "hardcore games don't sell on the Wii"
2) PS3, 360 and PC can be considered a single platform with little extra cost, whereas the Wii is unique for the need to tone down in graphics and size, and the need to create game mechanics involving the motion/IR controls that are not reusable anywhere else. It's basically the "exclusive vs multiplatform" argument, really.
The numbers I read around here were _really_ different, especially regarding the break even point. I wonder if anyone has hard data about how much Nintendo takes out of the retail price of a game and how the break even point was calculated.
Edit: just realized that another thread linked to the same content, so I guess I'll look there for answers. Feel free to lock this one
