okay, i follow you there and your argument has a basis.  Think of this serario.

Company "A" exists with a certain number of employees.  For the entirely of the ps2 generation it had the resources to release 10 games a year.  In the current generation company "A" focused on the HD consoles and with the exact same resources can only release 3 games a year.  This company now is required to see higher sales of each of their releases than in the previous generation which is why there are in economic trouble.

...Now I am not convinced that development for the HD consoles is nearly as bad as some would like to suggest and I certainly don't believe the answer is to move all of your resources to the Wii.  But what can't be denied is that a lot of developers are in trouble or are already out of business. 

Personally I think having the wii be popular really is the main issue.  Last gen wether you were going for the casuals or the "hardcore" you put your game on the ps2.  This gen not so much, you have to either chose wii or HD and in making a choice you are isolating a segment of your audiance.  I guess you can go multiplat wii/HD but since they don't port well you really did just make two games.

it boils down to this - a game - any game from a AAA top of the line game to a cheap shovelware game will cost less to make on Wii than the HD consoles.

Take most visually impressive game that the HD console can handle VS the most visually impressive game that the Wii can handle - the Wii's game will require a fraction of the art assets at a fraction of the size because it's the most it can handle. -> Less Man hours = Less $$$ to make the game

Even on the opposite end of the spectrum - I noticed that Boom Blox was mentionned so I'll go with that. The developpers would have to make many more textures much bigger (ie: increased detail) and they're want to put more models and more overall environment for the game to be acceptable on the HD consoles which would multiply the cost of man hours (aka $$$) for the game to be made.

@ Kitler53 and Famousringo

from reading your posts, I understand that it's about more vs less chances to gamble on the market which is what the HD consoles have caused but the question remains whether the wii is really the answer for 3rd parties. I'm not too sure if releasing 2, 3 or 4 MGS-type games on wii would have been a better gamble than even only one on ps3 because like Kitler pointed out, while in the ps2 gen, all consoles were pretty much analogous to one another, we have a problem on our hands this gen.

Is it "safer" to release a game like MGS with similar quality at maybe 1.3 the resources (adding marketing which is constant) vs releasing the game on a single platform with less than half the userbase but where a mil is guaranteed? Fanbase for the type of game one develops isalso crucial. I'm not sure SSBB would sell millions on ps3. It's even more complicated when you haven't decided what project the "liberated"employees would work on after project 1 is done.

@famousringo

Also, many people seem to think every third party would be better served by switching to wii but I like how you only considered "small, independent devs" because market saturation would be a result of everyone jumping into the fray. Even the ps2's userbase could only manage 200 mil sellers because newcomers usually buy the known good games before taking gambles. Thus newcomers, would still have to consider SMG, MKwii, Zelda, SSBB, wii fit, etc before considering your entry. As saturation and established IPs increase, prospects decrease. So even if the 4 game strategy was possible, it may not look god at that stage.

My rant basically boils down to this: wii isn't the answer many people think. The gaming industry may just have to downsize to restore profitability.

it's cheaper or at least it's a little cheaper.
but how much cheaper , no solid info.

people just jump and talk about how cheap it is to develop for the wii when no one really knows and if u question it they get angry -.-'

MARS , a game for the ps3 and pc cost 3 million euros to make , I really would like to see how it's gonna look like so we can have something that's actually "true and a fact " to base our conclusions on.

developments costs and "marketing budgets" are the 2 things that i really want some solid data on.

This is another misconception about HD consoles. A PS360 game doesn't have to be overtly visually impressive. I refuse to believe that Disgaea 3 and Valkyria chronicles cost more than SMG. The graphics opition offered by PS360 was meant to provide flexibility IMO i.e make whatever suits you purposes as opposed to your game must look like mgs4/gears 2 which is the concept thats making PS360 games take more manhours. If Persona 4 looked like it did and said ps3 on the case instead of ps2, I'll still buy it no questions asked and I have the feeling that most series fans would as well.

Why do developers have to increase detail? They could make an XBL or PSN game and leave it at SD levels. Hell Disgaea 3 didin't seem much improved from the PS2 days and it was a Blu Ray release.  

My only question to you is when 3rd parties realize this and start throwing more money at the Wii games wont the costs rise just as rapidly as the HD model?  Especially once we figure in advertising and competition from everyone "jumping" ship.

Woo! Thanks for this. Absolute numbers don't work. All HD games don't need 1 million or even 500k to break even.

And some Wii games need more than 500k to break even.

I get a big lol out of the failure to see the irony in "Why don't publishers make better Wii games, I thought they were cheap??"

The so-called cheapness of Wii games comes from their low-grade nature, not the magical Wii coder and art gnomes that ship with the Wii devkits.

You get what you pay for.

I agree completely. Like I said to your post in the Id thread, diversification is really the way to go.  Big publishers need to spread their projects out and they need to make some spending cuts. Small publishers need to leave HD development to the big guys who can afford to bet big while they work on Wii games, handheld games, and downloadable games.

The big HD project versus four Wii projects comparison is a little extreme. A more representative plan would be switching from two HD projects to one HD project, one Wii project, a few downloadable and handheld projects and some staff cuts.

I don't think that the Wii should monopolize development budgets, but I do think that HD has been over-represented in budgets, Wii has been under-represented, and the budgets themselves have been larger than they should be.

How about comparing similar games? The Conduit and Killzone 2 are both exclusive FPS that are supposed to push the limits of their respective consoles. Development costs on Killzone 2 has been estimated to be between 30 and 60 million dollars. The Conduit has been estimated at 10 million.