Just development vs development its >10M vs ~60 or ~1:6 between The Conduit and Killzone 2.

We are comparing apples to apples, or exclusive to exclusive.  Gears 2 was heavily outsourced to China, and the cost of the engine is not in that $10 million number.

Development began in October 2007.  We have not had screen shots since then.

Where the heck do all these 'informed and professional' analysts come from? Geez, did they open another can and let 'em all out?
I think I'm gonna be an analyst, that way I'll get paid for saying whatever crosses my mind. :p

I suggest we rather pray other developers don't become like Activision.

Sequel after sequel put out with frightening regularity, lack of innovative ip unless it can be changed in another sequel cash cow, milking fans with DLC. Hell they even changed Starcraft 2 from single game to trilogy to get more revenue.

As for the topic I knew the guy will be crucified here for stating the truth.

You're right, the first screenshots were from about April, 2008, showing everything from environments to weapons fire to enemies.  You're suggesting, that, in less than 7 months time, The Conduit was near alpha?  New engine from scratch, built to harness the Wii... right?  And that only a handful of their current staff was onboard at the time?

EDIT: I read the gamasutra article that ringo posted below... they state that their R&D was basically done by the time the project started -- in other word, there's a whole lot of investment in their "bath house" tech demo, before said engine ever turned into "The Conduit" in Octobet, 2007.  I think the 18 months dev time myth is dispelled -- The Conduit, inclusive of its engine tech, has been in development much longer than that.

They've stated in interviews that the concept came to them in October 2007 when they wished they could play Halo 3 with Metroid Prime 3 controls, so the game might be closer to 20 months of work now that they have a firm release date. The first images were released in April 2008 on IGN as seen here. That's 12 months ago.

All these facts are gleaned from various interviews. I'm sorry you find them confusing. I'd offer to track down the particular interview for each fact if these guys didn't give out so damn many interviews. :P

Edit: I found it anyway. This one has most of the relevant facts we're discussing. It's from Sept. 2008 and he states they are content complete and nearing alpha:

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20130

@Zledeji: Too late to get your hopes up. That's excactly the business strategy of all big publishers due to rising dev costs them needing to play it safe.

@Saicho: It was very traditional roadkill burial.

How does a single example address his question which was about the frequency of titles?

Funny how people here are still saying third party games don't sell on wii.

Well offcourse we know that. But there is more too it. Those games are crap. If people read more you will find plenty of people who have analysed game review scores and you can clearly see how many of those games are highly rated.

Earlier posts have shown 3rd party games that have sold well if they are good and aimed at the right people.

People still talk about MadWorld not selling well. Sure it will sel slowly, but did you really expect big numbers for a black and white game with a 6 hour story mode and just pure killing. A lot of people would find that kind of game over the top disturbing. Hell I know people who won't watch war movies cause too much killing.

Metroid Prime has always been a nichie seires, just look at previous game. Sales are similar.


Offourse shovelware sells well. Why? because people who are buying it are non gamers who don't read online reviews and jsut are impulse shoppers.

The "core" audience of the Wii are educated gamers who research before buying. If the game is crap they won't buy it.


Now lets look at the gamecube. About 25million sales world wide. Wii is almost double.

NOW LET ME POINT THIS OUT. THIS IS ONLY A PURE GUESS.

out of that 25 million I would expect maybe 10-15 million core gamers (Nintendo's meaning). Rest was parents buying the console for their children or christams presents for others.


So now put this into perspective. OUt of those 15 million core gamers, maybe 13 million at most has upgraded to a new console. Maybe 10 million of the 13 million are brand loyal (over 3million go where the gfx are or hate motion controls) so about 10million X gamecube new Wii owners.

So in essense you are probably marketing to a 10 million core audience + 10-of the 40 million floating part time gamers and casuals.


So at BEST the total core market audience is 10 million + 4 million that MAY BUY a game.

Like I mentioned above, "core" gamers are educated gamers who will do their research.

What this means is developers NEED to make great games on Wii and not cheap ports with tacked on controls to sell well.

Even then you have to look at personal tastes in genre of those 10million.

So in reality your probably catering for maybe 2/3 of that again. So about 7 million people potentially will buy your game.


I know this is a very crude analysis that I have done. However in reality you cannot AIM at the whole user base, you have to aim at your audience you are trying to make the gamefor and make sure it is good for their tastes. Becuase those are the people that will help you sell the games for you by word of mouth etc..

Does it really matter... The only thing that matters to me is that nintendo games sell well and 3rd party games that show great quality(Madworld isn't enough quality for me, but it's a nice try)

RE4 is a good quality game for the wii and it has good sales, but it's a gc port though.

Then we have monster hunter 3, the conduit and ghostbusters wii that will PROBABLY have good quality and I hope these games get good sales. Well, monster hunter 3 will sell good, that's almost a fact, but the other 2... They can go either way if you ask me.