On average, to develop for the Wii hardware, it is going to be cheaper. That's just fact. But how much cheaper varies. It depends on time of development, number of people working, and the style of the game. It takes less money to make a game like No More Heroes than Red Steel simply on style.

In general Wii development is naturally cheaper but depending on the game, effort, and time can really vary of how much cheaper it is. For the most part, Red Steel had the production values of an "HD" game as ya'll like to call it.

We should really stop referring to games as being "HD" or not. The fact that expensive titles happen to end up on the HD consoles may be true, but it doesn't have to be.

I'd say that assumption is one of the Wii's biggest problems.

This makes sense and is the basis for my analysis. However, if you consider the fact that those man hours would be used for working on another game, then the development cost is the same and the publishers are still not saving money if no one gets fired. In fact, the costs would go up if marketing is factored into the equation. Marketing is relative so I chose to leave  it out. Thus unless people are fired or take a pay cut, publishers still expend the same $$$. Now we have to consider if the multiple wii games would be a more profitable venture.

Many expect the wii to be the bastion where all 3rd parties can come together and profit again. If they all switched to this strategy and we had 4 wii dead spaces (or 2 if they were the same quality for every 1 on ps360 and maybe even less if there is serious marketing), some won't sell much regardless of userbase. Won't this put devs back into the same spiral they tried to run from? Note that I never factored demographics into any of this to abstain from complexity but that actually would even make things worse because your typical dead space fan may not be a significant portion of the wii's 50% marketshare.

I'm not even sure of this either. My 4 game analogy was keeping something like bloom blox in mind vs a title like Infamous

Pristine20, whats your problem lol?

A less advanced game don't need as many man hours to make, is that so hard to understand? Why u mix in layoffs and other insignifcant stuff?

You're right, if they keep the same number of staff on board, their overall costs wont change much. In fact, they might even go up a little because they have to manage more teams and market more products.

But that's the key part right there, they'll have four times the product.

Any single game you make is going to be a gamble, and the only surefire way to protect yourself from that risk is to diversify. Only mega-publishers can afford to diversify with a wide array of HD offerings. If a small, independant developer (like Free Radical or Factor 5, to pick a couple totally random examples) wants to diversify, they pretty much have to go for Wii or handheld development.

So in your example of one HD game vs. four Wii games, don't look at it as one game that needs to sell a million versus four that need to sell 250k. Look at it as one chance to to sell a million versus four chances to sell a million. Just one of those Wii games has to be a hit to recover costs for all four projects, and you can survive three bombs. If your single HD game bombs, you're up the creek and looking for somebody to buy you up while your assets are still worth something.

I don't see how just the wii hardware would be intrinsically cheaper to develop for. I just can't imagine singstar being cheaper than SMG. I think what costs money is the salaries of the people working on x game and therefoe the time they spend working on it. Ps3 hardware is supposedly difficult to work around so I'd think it's ecxpensive games would be that way because people don't know what they are doing yet (hence they take longer development cyclesmeaning more time a person is paid to work on ps3 games) as opposed to a wii game since the wii uses GC architecture which is already known. Technology used i.e licensing new engines may add an external factor to cost but if it is an in-house engine then it's really just more employee hours spent making the engine.

However for a company like Insomniac, would a wii AAA game be significantly cheaper than ps3 when they haven't worked with the wii/GC architecture before, have no engine to use for it and their employees get paid the same to work on the game (this is assuming the game is also SMG quality because my OP assumed bloom blox-type titles)?

My point is that if those employees are still working for the company and getting paid the same salary, development isn't really cheaper regardless of what they're making i.e the main problem with studios is their size not really the platforms they develop for, why is this hard to understand? You do realize that when game developmnet cycles are complete, devs still get paid right?  KZ2 is done...do you think GG has disbanded?

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/6299-wii-development-costs-remain-low/
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/cost-of-development-greatly-favors-wii-say-publishers/69714/?biz=1

The thought was that the Wii cost less to develop for at the beginning

And those cost savings are still there

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/04/more-wii-games-from-ea-thanks-to-low-development-costs/

Sorry if I cannot provide actual figures ... but rather links to stories from those who actually make games stating that Wii development costs are roughly one-third of those for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

(And I would have had more but a search for Wii Development Costs turns up too many references to the New York Times' misquote of Reggie Fils-Aime).

Mike from Morgantown

 Yeah, but dev costs arent measured like that. U raise a good point, that real life factors play their part, but for comparison reasons u just have to keep them out.´

And also, dev teams are quite flexible employers and there's a big flow of workers in the gameing business between different jobs and projects.

So lets agree that at least on paper Wii dev costs are cheaper for the simple reason that the hardware has one foot in last gen.