Well again, here's something where EA's message doesn't actually reflect reality.  Wii sales are up dramatically for them, 360 sales are dramatically down... I think there's some confusion between EA's IR and PR.

Exactly.  They're making money on the Wii and losing money in other areas.  What do they do...they blame the Wii.

That's been the typical practice this gen.  Third parties throw their weak games on the Wii and expect it to sell.  While they put all their good games on the other systems and see mixed results.  But they only point their finger at the Wii when it doesn't perform to their liking.  And in this case, EA shouldn't even be complaining at all.

hmm, well, if that's the case, poo on EA.

i think they need to push advertisement .DS was a good game but had minimal pre and post advertisement, and its not such a big franchise as RE.
I dont think Sin and punnishment(a onrailed game with a small difference-you change your position) is significantly cheaper than a side scroller like muramasa, and certainly, DS pushes the wii to its very limits in graphical terms FOR realistic visuals(which game looks better than DS in realistic facial/body animations and graphics on the wii?None).To achieve such level of fidelity required, at least, a decent amount of programing effort, especially taking in account the wii limitations.Yeah we can belittle and try to search for the odd square or pixel but overal, no humans are depicted in a more realistic way than this game on the wii.There is also a suitable physics engine to control the dismemberent and weaponry reactions,explosions and such, all that adds up.
Also DS is the game with the most extensive voice acting on the nintendo wii, all done by proffessional actors(more expenses).
The credits of the game include also a gigantic staff(larger than the conduit for example), which tends to show that it was not exactly a small budget title.maybe it was easier to program and design, but cheap?Seriously.Most people who play this game will notice this was more expensive than Wario Shake it! or many others.I really suggest people analyze throughly their thoughts before considering this an unexpensive effort.The quality assurance also took place so this landed as the highest on railed shooter on the wii(and overall in any console).
The fact that so many onrailed shooters(all of them!) scored lower means that something extra took place here, most likely, the superb graphics pushing the wii as close as possible to HD.
That said, EA could have aproached DS differently with the same staff, and SHOULD have marketted. Spore shouldnt have been a spin off neither. And sport games should be done more seriously without any wii ish caveats like goofy designs. EA needs to simply understand that wii is for gamers that enjoy motion controls, nothing less nothing more.

If EA was making a profit on Wii exclusives, relative to 360/PS3 multiplats, I feel certain that they would know it -- being a public company and accountable and all that.

The revenue numbers, thus, tell a story. The revenue on Wii exclusives is the same as PS3 multiplats. Apparently, perhaps even obviously, the money to develop/market/etc. the average Wii exclusive exceeds that of the average multiplat PS3 title's portion of multiplat development.

Every assumption that Wii games are, indeed, made from $5 and a unicorn fart is true -- but unicorns are really quite rare, and getting one to fart for your game apparently costs many millions of dollars, so it works out poorly for the Wii in the end.  EA is asking Nintendo to remove the unicorn fart part of Wii software development for this reason. Maybe allow for pegasi or specially trained Lipizzaners instead.

Jokes aside, Wii development isn't as cheap as the average forum joe likes to think. It is a fair amount cheaper, but not so much so that it can come out the clear winner in today's marketplace, especially when the Wii stands alone (from an architecture perspective), and requires an entire dev team all to itself.  The Wii cannot get out of the demographic scatter issue, or the architectural uniqueness issue.  These are pretty severe problems, in the end.

It started out not a lot less, and while games do cost closer to high end 6th gen games, costs of HD game development has skyrocketed (see the comments about Gran Turismo 5 costing $60 million, and the developers thinking that isn't so much), so Wii development is a lot less by that virtue.

Doesn't it seem to you, by that logic, that EA wouldn't be complaining, though?  Many of the titles EA has published for the Wii have sold in the 200-800K range.  While that's not stellar, and Wii games tend to retail for less overall, wouldn't that support their efforts, and make it worth it to them, if the cost was justified?

Say Wii games make the publisher about $20 (revenue) per copy (which is not unreasonable, considering the retail cut, and a likely large Nintendo cut).  At 500K, thats $10 million USD of justified expense, considering cost-of-goods, marketing, and development costs.

Say PS360 games make the publisher about $30 per copy (again, not unreasonable, since retail and licensing fees are probably similar to Wii titles, as the games take up the same shelf space, etc.), and the dev cost is either split between the PS3 and 360 versions, or the revenue vs expense is counted from both consoles.  

If you peruse the database here, it sure looks like the publishers are having better luck with the latter version than the former.

Since EA is talking about "working with Nintendo" -- perhaps they mean cutting deals with Nintendo, such that, per-unit, the revenue is larger than it currently is, in return for having some fresh new IPs, exclusively for Nintendo platforms?

Yea, and that $60 million figure does not even include marketing.

Shoot, I could count with one hand the amount of 3rd party Wii games that cost more than $9 million.

For a proper analysis, you guys shouldn't be comparing 1st party exclusives to 3rd party games.  Nintendo, Sony, and MS are justified in spending a lot more money on their exclusives, because they help move hardware, thus providing income indirectly in the future, and they make more per unit, since there are no licensing fees to pay.

1st party exclusives almost always cost a LOT more than 3rd party games of similar types.

Some exceptions include GTA IV (considered a safe bet due to the series history), and Too Human (unintentionally).