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Forums - Gaming - Analyst: Wii Is 'Fool's Gold' For Game Investors

smallflyingtaco on 08 April 2009
Procrastinato said:

@ theRepublic:

I had heard that KZ2 was in the 30-40M range. from some other sources on the web.  Quoting the high-end estimate helps support the idea that making games on the Wii is "cheap", but I'm not sure its realistic.  

In addition, why would marketing, etc. tend to cost so much more on the PS360, as opposed to the Wii?

 

 

 I think I had heard a number in this range as well but it was in Euros which would put it somewhere around $60 million dollars depending on when you did the conversion.



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68soul on 08 April 2009


A console is not "AAA-oriented" or "casual" oriented, a console is defined by the games made for it...

It's all about the developpers and their creativity, but it's also all about where the "big money" is for the studios owners, and this time, it's on Nintendo's side...

BUT, everybody thought it HAD to be on PS360... and a large part of the industry's money was on these consoles for the last three years... many very costly AAA HD investments HAD to be successful, because of the massive amount of money already invested anyway: you get the point?

But now, the Wii is a massive success, breaking all the records, and its main failure is to not have been released in 2000 or 2001, to do better than the massive success of PS2 "in real time", and not with a 6 years gap...

That would have been something, don't you think? And i'm not sure the PS2 would then have sold 100 millions... Sony may feel very lucky it's ONLY a "competition" with a 6 years delay, that's for sure...

And yes, the Wii is a massive success, EVEN DESPITE the (nearly) total absence of excellent AAA 3rd party games, with a budget at least similar to some of the latest excellent AAA titles on PS2!

Such a shame... thanks to such "anal-ysts", the industry has been brainwashed for the last three years, with the same implicit message: forget about Wii, it will do you no good...

And now these same "anal-ysts" can be so proud to confirm the bias they have helped to create...

How could 3rd parties have a massive success on Wii, workin' on every types of games for every kinds of gamers, buildin' a very large, very diverse and very enthousiastic userbase for the future, IF THEY NEVER EVEN TRY?

Makes no sense...



 

"A beautiful drawing in 480i will stay beautiful forever...

and an ugly drawing in 1080p will stay ugly forever..."

saicho on 08 April 2009
Procrastinato said:

@ theRepublic:

I had heard that KZ2 was in the 30-40M range. from some other sources on the web.  Quoting the high-end estimate helps support the idea that making games on the Wii is "cheap", but I'm not sure its realistic.  

In addition, why would marketing, etc. tend to cost so much more on the PS360, as opposed to the Wii?

 

KZ2 was in 20-30 millions range before the budget went out of control. Even if you google, any articles published after 2008 regarding KZ2 budget would tell you the budget "ballooned" to 60 millions. 

 



MikeB predicts that the PS3 will sell about 140 million units by the end of 2016 and triple the amount of 360s in the long run.

famousringo on 08 April 2009
Procrastinato said:
Mr Khan said:

If we throw the whole notion of profit out the window, then this article has a point.

That's an interesting point.  Do we actually know the costs of making a game like CoD:WaW, Metroid Prime 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld, or The Conduit on the Wii, or are we just assuming that its in the same "1/4th as much" ballpark that all the shovelware is?  Does the marketing and manufacturing cost 1/4 as much on the Wii as well, and does it garner the same revenue per unit sold?

Takes a lot of work to turn a profit.  Having 5-8x the sales numbers must be a nice place to start.

 

 

Well, I expect CoD: WaW would be pretty cheap if you consider the content to be paid for by the HD development (it gets messy if you want to divvy up the content costs on a multiplatform release). I'm sure it cost something to downscale the textures and port the engine, but I doubt they spent too much on that, since the engine doesn't make much use of the Wii's TEV and the online is less robust than some other Wii games. Ditto for Tomb Raider, except the Crystal engine was already established on Wii for Tomb Raider Anniversary.

All I know about the Conduit's cost is that their dev team was around 30 people a few months ago and their dev cycle is about 18 months. The team size probably peaked higher at some point, so it's hard to know how much labour actually went into The Conduit. Doesn't sound too pricey compared to triple-digit teams working on a dev cycle 50-100% larger, though.



"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event."  — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.

theprof00 on 08 April 2009

@bdbdbd
exactly on that second part. Too human was in development 10 years!!! They spent more money just switching to new platforms than anything else lol.

I do feel bad for free radical though. They should have just stuck to the timesplitter series instead of a gamble on a huge game. Needless to say, Halo played a big part in that move. Timesplitters was popular once, as returns got smaller and smaller they decided they should ty to compete, and in the end it was a failure.



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saicho on 08 April 2009
bdbdbd said:
@Rol: Looks gold but isn't gold. Ironic indeed.

Damn, i just drove over a rabbit. Quite a loud noise when it hits the car.

Did you at least give it a proper burial?



MikeB predicts that the PS3 will sell about 140 million units by the end of 2016 and triple the amount of 360s in the long run.

reask on 08 April 2009
AkiraGr said:
The more i read about this particular analysis the more i wish the publishers try and follow it!

Don't get me wrong all i wish is to play good games on my Wii and because publishers all they do is screw us again and again because of this fucking idiots anal-ist write this crap.

I do dare them to follow this so every single one bleed out all their money and die so the developers starting breath freely and create everything they want on every platform they want.

 

Why is Ninty not buying into a slice of these games anyway?

I mean PS360 multiplats sell on both consoles so why not Wii as well.

I mean I would like to see certain games on Wii for variety.

I am sure it could handle most games,

Sure the graphics may  not be as good but give me good game play over graphics any day.



 

 

 

 

Procrastinato on 08 April 2009
saicho said:
Procrastinato said:

@ theRepublic:

I had heard that KZ2 was in the 30-40M range. from some other sources on the web.  Quoting the high-end estimate helps support the idea that making games on the Wii is "cheap", but I'm not sure its realistic.  

In addition, why would marketing, etc. tend to cost so much more on the PS360, as opposed to the Wii?

 

KZ2 was in 20-30 millions range before the budget went out of control. Even if you google, any articles published after 2008 regarding KZ2 budget would tell you the budget "ballooned" to 60 millions. 

 

Okay, say that's true -- what then causes the advertising budget of KZ2 to be $40M and the advertising budget of The Conduit to be 1/4th that -- $10M?  And the production costs, etc?

Since we're talking crossplat PS360 games, why are we bothering talking about KZ2 at all, anyway?  Its an exclusive meant to show off a console -- the return they expect would largely be in marketshare and not directly in money.  How about CoD:WaW or CoD4?  If we are going to continue talking exclusives, how about Gears 2, which supposedly only cost $10M to develop?

 



 

famousringo on 08 April 2009
RolStoppable said:
One question: What does the term "fool's gold" exactly mean?

I am thinking that it means that it looks like there is an easy and supposedly guaranteed way to get rich quickly, but in reality it only makes you lose money.

If that's the definition of it, then this article is hella ironic, I must say.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite

A mineral with a striking resemblance to gold, but not especially valuable.



"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event."  — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.

Procrastinato on 08 April 2009
famousringo said:

Well, I expect CoD: WaW would be pretty cheap if you consider the content to be paid for by the HD development (it gets messy if you want to divvy up the content costs on a multiplatform release). I'm sure it cost something to downscale the textures and port the engine, but I doubt they spent too much on that, since the engine doesn't make much use of the Wii's TEV and the online is less robust than some other Wii games. Ditto for Tomb Raider, except the Crystal engine was already established on Wii for Tomb Raider Anniversary.

All I know about the Conduit's cost is that their dev team was around 30 people a few months ago and their dev cycle is about 18 months. The team size probably peaked highe r at some point, so it's hard to know how much labour actually went into The Conduit. Doesn't sound too pricey compared to triple-digit teams working on a dev cycle 50-100% larger, though.

How is the The Conduit's dev cycle only 18 months, when we've had screenshots for it, for about that amount of time?  Usually screenshots don't start happening until near Alpha, and by then a project is about 3/4ths complete.  You guys are really throwing out some confusing numbers here.