"No NOBODY here knows it but some of you automatically assume that its the because of HD gaming DESPITE the fact all developers invest even more into the HD market ?
Do you know how their internal calculations are ? Maybe a big chunk of this costs were for education of employees or investing in new Hardware for 3d development natal development or what ever."

Investment doesn't automatically lead to losses. Nintendo is making an entirely new R&D facility. That's an investment they won't see any money from for quite a while. But they made sure they had the means to make that investment with minimal effect to their bottom line.

Many third parties are not doing that. They were focused primarily on HD games and trying to use the Wii's mythical casual market (mythical in the sense they believed those people bought games because they were casual). And this was before NATAL was even announced, when they were still losing money.

Now the HD projects could still have worked, but many companies still mismanaged them and let the costs get out of control. Those that weren't mismanaged instead spent loads of time and money to make the games just to the point they wanted, and the sales weren't any higher than the last gen.

Where do people get the idea that it's cheaper to develop on Wii games?  Programmers cost what they cost, and to try and build a game that provides an appropriate amount of depth of gameplay and looks somewhat decent on a significantly weaker platform would suggest it might take more effort to try and make a good Wii game.

Sure there's a lot of tripe out there for the Wii, but look at some of the highly acclaimed games developed for the console like Madworld and World of Goo and how they ended up selling and it gets easy to understand the lack of motivation 3rd party developers have to create games for the platform.  Even worse, go to a store and observe who is buying games and how they buy - you'll see a mom picking up several boxes, seeing 15-party games vs. 12-party games and thinking they're getting a better deal.  Look at how a game like Carnival Games sold as an example.  It's got to be depressing for a game company to try and think about what great game they can build when they have Carnival Games as the model of how a game without Mario can sell well on the console.

People use Monster Hunter as an example of a good game that sold well - however what they seem to miss is that the game was bundled with the console.  A special version of the console no less.  Any game should hit 1mil in sales being packaged with the Wii. 

I'm not saying it's impossible, but without Mario, it sure looks bleak. 

I'm wondering if most systems are.

"Where do people get the idea that it's cheaper to develop on Wii games?"

Execs from companies have actually said so.

"some of the highly acclaimed games developed for the console like Madworld and World of Goo"

Acclaim does not equal sales. GTA IV would have outsold Mario Kart if that was the case.

"People use Monster Hunter as an example of a good game that sold well - however what they seem to miss is that the game was bundled with the console.  A special version of the console no less.  Any game should hit 1mil in sales being packaged with the Wii."

Those were non-bundled sales that were counted. Did you do any research?

Because basically all publishers and many developers have stated so?

Even Polyphony Digital, a Sony developer has said that making PS3 graphics requires much more manpower than making PS2 graphics (which are definitely closer to Wii graphics than Wii to PS3):

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2007/12/kazunori-yamauchi-dishes-more-gran-turismo-5-details.ars

@Netyaroze:

The companies' financial reports don't have enough detail to show this, but if you just look at everything they say about development costs, and then look at their revenue, it's painfully obvious that development costs have risen much faster than revenue.

If you compare to the last generation alone, development costs have risen between 3-4 times according to many statements from publishers... no way revenue has risen that much. Game prices (on the PS3 and 360) have increased by about 20%, and the size of the gaming public hasn't increased anywhere near 3 times (and it rose more on the Wii platform than on the HD platforms vs the PS2).

1. True, they should think of the gamers themselves, but, to their credit they are. They think that gamers will also want to 'best' game they can get and to them that includes the pushing of technologies barrier. Think about it, the game industry has always pushed PC technology forward. Well, that includes consoles when they have drastic differences in capabilities.

Where I thought they would migrate to biggest install base, they instead focused on biggest playground and since the HD's combined market has always been equal or larger than Wii's, it makes sense to keep to what they know.

2. I don't agree at all on this and I think the PS2/Wii development proves my point. It is easier to build a ground up Wii game and port it down to the PS2 that it is to create a HD based PS360 game and port it down to Wii. Otherwise they wouldn't have worked this way over all of these years. Let's face it, Wii is closer to a PS2 than it is to a PS360. It's SD with a sub 1ghz single core processor, very similar to PS2. That's a big difference to the multi ghz, multi-core processors found in ps360 systems.

Devs originally really like the Wii and its controller scheme and they ALL raved about it. However, they all agreed that the power was too limiting to do what they *wanted* to do and the new users Wii brought in have no interest in playing a game like FPS or Assassin's Creed. They like MK and NSMBWii or Let's Dance, etc.

While it can't be said the Wii wasn't a MASSIVE success, you can say it had limited potential that matched its limited power which caused limited 3rd party support. Even though Nintendo games are far superior to the greater majority of all 3rd party products, that simply isn't enough to create the next NES, PS1, or PS2.

The issue about them losing support because they have bucked the technological standard has merit (that's what cost them 3rd party support before, just it was issues of lack of online and tiny storage mediums, not of a graphical gap), the only problem is, why are the losing consoles still setting the technological standard?

"Now the HD projects could still have worked, but many companies still mismanaged them and let the costs get out of control. Those that weren't mismanaged instead spent loads of time and money to make the games just to the point they wanted, and the sales weren't any higher than the last gen."


I give you the point that Nintendo made a lot of right obviously and if 3rd party devs are losing money its their fault but game sales are significantly higher then last gen. PS3 and Xbox360 sold almost as much as the PS2 or was it even more ? With a smaller userbase and in a much shorter time.

1 Million is nothing special, last gen it was something this gen its ok.

We had GTA last gen and GT but this gen we have several 10 Million+ sellers a lot of 5 Million sellers and 3 Million sellers. The sales are way better then last gen. Games with 350k are a failure (Lair).

1. When the largest market is not where you are, you are not really serving the customers needs as much as you think you are, especially when the flashiest games are not the bestsellers (Crysis versus Modern Warfare, for one). If you still insist on making those games when the results are constant, it's clear you are making them for you, not the customers.

2. That is not what I wrote. I wrote they would not have given the HD games to the Wii if the system had been HD. It's just an excuse, or else we would have had more than three converted HD games in all this time.

Yes I know that they dont have enough detail so maybe everybody should atleast show a sign of uncertainty if he made claims like they are going down because of HD consoles etc.

Development cost have risen yes. 3-4 times yes maybe but the numbers have risen too maybe not enough but that makes the gaming companys to just produce high profile titels. 

And you forge that there are several ways to decrease the costs. Like using always the same engine makin multiplatform title. Using ingame engine instead of cutscenes. And yes the real big games cost 50-60 Million but this is not the average First part games from sony need lesser units sold to break even because they dont have to pay themselfs licensing fees. DLC content is another way to get money back. And most of the costs are fix costs that means that if they payed once for things like Hardware and special educations and if they developed tools the costs will go down its always like this in the beginnig there is a jump- PS1 games were 1.5 Mln PS2 games 5-10 Mln this jump is always but costs decrease with the time. We just have a lot of development at the moment Online gaming is big DLC is new digital distribution those things needs huge investments but next or the gen after there wont be much to improve everything will stagnate.

They calculate properly. Everytime something changes someone lose and someone wins. This will happen in the future too.

most games cost 20 Mln even some of the best. 50-60 Mln is special. And maybe 35 Mln for a Multiplat title. Thats 17.5 per version i bet games like wipeout cost maybe 12 Million or 15 Million or Siren blood curse. The companys know that they if they know that a title costs more to make then it possibly sells they wont do it. I think it will stabilze in the next 2 years 2rd party devs will be in the black if all the most are still in the red then it indicates a major problem its still ok. 1-2 Companys arent the whole market. 

How many actually made losses the in 2009 ?