Even a blind man can see that there are issues in relation to third party publisher and the Nintendo Wii, sympathy there, however I just find it infuriating that so many people blindly bash the publisher. Its okay to say, hey guys something is wrong here. Its really annoying to hear people boldly proclaim that they have the solution and why are the publisher so stupid when all they have to do is a simple A-B-C?

And btw, this is not directed at you.

I don't see a lot of blind bashing going on here, I see a lot of constructive criticisms. People have every right to be upset at 3rd party developers and their treatment of the Wii and its consumers. And yes, the solution is quite simple, and I can sum it up in only one sentence: DO NOT treat Wii owners like second class citizens.

I think I've lost my point :/ and I aplogise if I come off as scathing which I don't intend.

Yes there is a lot of constructive criticism in this thread and I thought a lot of post were very insightful, but the general undertone here seems to be that publishers are bleeding money because they aren't supporting the wii and that the obviously solution to this is to support the wii.

I just can't wrap my ahead around the concept that the solution is that simple that it would have take anyone with half a brain 3 second to conclude. There are too many unknown variable for it to be a simple game of 'publisher are a bunch of big fat morons'.

I should put it better. If they put at least most of their less popular HD games on the Wii instead of the HD system, the costs would be lower, so the smaller sales those games get on any system (even in the 6th gen they would get a few hundred thousand sales) would mean they would have a better chance at a profit instead of making even their niche games big budget.

It's not the only solution, but it's a good step.

Are we really going to rehash what has already been said in this thread?  Fine, try not to ignore it this time.

We see in financial reports that many many developers and publishers are putting up a lot of red ink.  They are losing money.

We know that the industry put up record revenues in 2008.  Therefore, the only way they could be losing money is if they are also putting up record costs.

Do you think healthy businesses lose money when bringing in record revenues?  You still think these people know what they are doing?

We also know the reason for the record costs.  It is the extra level of detail that is needed in the art assets for games in HD to look as amazing as they do.  We know it makes games 2 to 4 times as expensive as their SD counterparts.

For games like Halo, Final Fantasy, and Call of Duty, the extra expense doesn't matter much, since those games are going to profit anyway.  For just about everything else however, these companies have completely failed to hold budgets in line with sales expectations.

Games that do not have multi-million sales expectations, should not have the big budgets to have highly detailed graphics.  Why management refuses to hold budgets in check I'm not sure.  I have a feeling they are afraid to release games with SD level budgets on the 360 and PS3 because they think those games will just get blown away by the big hitters with bigger budgets.  I think that this would happen.

So what is the solution if you can't just hold back budgets?  Release just a few big budget sure things?  We are seeing a lot of that.  Unfortunately, that also increases risk, and is why we have seen some studios close their doors after just one flop.

So what is left?  What to do with those games that should have smaller budgets...

^It sounds so simple when you explain it... so I'm sitting here scratching my head wondering: Why isn't budget curbed and development asset shifted to a much more lucrative market? Why isn't this done? Company obviously wants to make money, and if the solution is so simple that any logical thinking person draw the conclusion within minutes in a debate on an internet forum, wouldn't somebody out their make the same realization?

I just can't see it in my head. It can't be that simple, otherwise every half-wit could become CEO of Activision and become the next Steve Job.

It's the nature of an arms race between publishers. They don't want their games to look worse than the competition's, so they will invest a lot of money on making awesome PS3/360 graphics even without being sure that they'll be able to make a profit.

They realize that it's risky, but they also realize that many hardcore gamers and the industry will pound on them and probably not buy their games if they tone down graphics a lot.

Essentially they're doing what they have to do in order to keep satisfying their target market. This is how you set up the industry for a crash.

Can't we all please just drop this topic and change the subject to looking forward to the third-party titles that are coming this year? We'll worry about 2011 when it comes. But in the meantime, there's lots to look forward to in 2010, including some third party gems that are just being brought here.

(Damn, I can't believe there are already 26 pages of this!)

Would you say the industry is on this exact path, now?

They've been on this path for several generations. Development costs increasing exponentially (doubling each generation, at least).  Does the gaming market grow exponentially? No. So expenses have been rising faster than revenues for a long time.

Nintendo broke the trend by launching a console with comparatively little improvement in graphics. But apparently the industry is not interested in supporting this model.