Topic: Cheap development costs=more games

[Cap]

gamespot has an article up with a few quotes from THQ president and CEO Brian Farrell, where he mentions how easy wii is too develop for and how cheap the development costs are compared to ps3 and xbox360.  He says that development costs are almost one quarter to a half of the other consoles. i would expect that with costs like that, it will be a give in for third partys to give better support to wii then they did the gamecube(which already apperas to be the case).

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6149154.html

maybe nintendos strategy will pay off?

[cubist]

Nintendo's development costs have always been too high for most developers in the N64 era, especially because of the cartridge.  The current generation of GCN was still a bit "pricey" for the same developers, although it was a step in the right direction.  If this article holds any truth, then Nintendo will have finally shed one of its many shortcomings...development costs, which by the way is right up there with bad marketing, bad media storage, and bad naming of consoles.  

[IceCold]

Well, with screenshots like the Rayman one, it's no wonder; many are treating it like a current-gen system..

[SixthAngel]

Do you mean the Rayman screenshot with the giant spider?  That shot looks great.  Were you looking at the crazy spiked haired kid the whole time?

[BranDonk Kong]

Take a closer look at the extremely low-res spider.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

The Rayman in-game pic is most likely a blown-up current-gen screenshot.  Publishers had a bad habit of providing screens with false (larger than NTSC) resolutions last gen -- it's good material for printed media, but gives a false impression to most of us on the interweb.

[KDR_11k]

That's interesting considering Epic said they can do next gen games for 1.5x the cost of current gen ones...

Publishers had a bad habit of providing screens with false (larger than NTSC) resolutions last gen

Last I checked the XBox was capable of HD output.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

"Last I checked the XBox was capable of HD output."

But only applies to select games (I'm assuming), like p.scan support in GC games.

High-rez screens of PS2 games that had no HD support whatsoever were the main offenders.

[Magik]

More games doesn't necessarily mean more good games.

Its entirely possibly that the Wii ends up having an assload of crap-sparkling innovationy games simply because its easy and cheap to throw something together to get a quick buck.

It's happening to the DS at the moment.

[Cap]

you're definately right about not all the games being great, but with more games being released at least some of those games should be decent. at least there might not be some periods like the gamecube had where there were no games being released, good or bad.

[NWR_pap64]

Quote
Originally posted by: Magik
More games doesn't necessarily mean more good games.

Its entirely possibly that the Wii ends up having an assload of crap-sparkling innovationy games simply because its easy and cheap to throw something together to get a quick buck.

It's happening to the DS at the moment.

True, but that's something that happens to all the consoles.

It happened to the NES, it happened to both the Genesis and the SNES, it happened to the PSone and PS2, it happened to the Gameboy color, it happened to the GBA and now it's happening to the DS.

When a console is insanely popular, you are bound to have a lot of people that want to develop for it. Some will bring masterpieces of gaming, others will bring you games that range from excellent to good and sometimes you will get some really awful games.

Having a lot of games, however, is actually good. One of the reasons the Sony systems were so successful was because it featured a lot of games, both exclusive and third party. When people see that a system has a lot of games they will think it's the best purchase because they will be getting a lot of games and a lot of variety.

So the Wii having all of these games is good for Nintendo. The more games, the more people will be impressed with it.

[The Omen]

Quote
More games doesn't necessarily mean more good games.

More games means the system is a desirable platform for third parties, which is always good in my mind.  Finally, Nintendo doesn't appear to be raping third parties for licensing, which they had a habit of doing.  This is good news..

[Ceric]

Plus in all the junk you might get a gem like Monster Rancher which would probably not been made if there weren't a lot of games out.

[Magik]

Quote
Originally posted by: The Omen

Quote
More games doesn't necessarily mean more good games.

More games means the system is a desirable platform for third parties, which is always good in my mind.  Finally, Nintendo doesn't appear to be raping third parties for licensing, which they had a habit of doing.  This is good news..

Lets hope it doesn't end up being the desired platform to dump garbage games for a quick buck.

Yeah, the PS2 definitely did have a large library, but what separated their library from the Xbox and GC was it covered practically every genre imaginable at the time.

You can have all the third party games in the world, but if they only span a few genres - look at the Xbox  -, it's not going to help a console out in the long run.

[Arbok]

Quote
Originally posted by: Magik
Its entirely possibly that the Wii ends up having an assload of crap-sparkling innovationy games simply because its easy and cheap to throw something together to get a quick buck.

It's happening to the DS at the moment.

I'm worried about this too. I will be pretty damn pissed as well if Nintendo starts to develop more stuff like "Yoshi's Touch ang Go" too. I mean, the game was fun for awhile, but it felt like a mini-game you unlock after beating something with a little more substance, not something you slap down $25-30 for. Expecting to do games like that and sell them for $40-50 is even more ludicrous, if it ever crossed their mind.