Activision CEO: “We Might Have To Stop Supporting Sony”

[joker454]

then why not drop all HD asset generation

Because HD assets are still usable on 360, PC and Wii. Yup that's right, you can use them on Wii. They need massaging of course, but that really doesn't cost a lot because like I said previously, it's just a downgrade. Some places will even have tools/scripts to do the downgrade for them automatically, and just have a single artist do touch ups after the fact! 360 + PC + Wii + some PS3 will make more money than just dropping all of HD and being Wii only. Also, the reverse situation you mention of just making Wii assets and then bumping them up to 360 level would never work. For one it costs a lot more to go Wii->360 compared to 360->Wii, and two, it would be way harder to get a good look. Basically, the cost of just making 360 assets is very similar to the costs of making 360+Wii assets, if you just downgrade 360 assets to Wii. The other way around though is bad.

It would be silly to sacrifice near guaranteed revenue on the PS3 simply because you want to take a crack at hitting a homerun on the Wii.

I can tell you with certainty that this already has happened. I can't tell you what, where or who, but maybe after the holidays Which brings me back to my original point, it already happens, just not a whole lot currently. A $400 holiday PS3 threatens to make it happen more. That was mostly my original point. Publishers all have a fixed number of product slots, they don't just launch everything they have. They sometimes even have 98% completed games that they never launch for a variety of reasons, even though it would make them "guaranteed revenue". You personally right now could hand them a 98% completed PS3 game that was guaranteed to sell say 200k units, it doesn't mean they would publish it. But what a sec...it's all done right? There is little work left, it's little cost to them, it's free money to them, why wouldn't they publish it? Because they will look at what's in the launch pipe and what's gonna be in the launch pipe, and see if your "guaranteed revenue" "98% complete" PS3 game is worthy of them compared to what else is in the pipe. Often it isn't and complete games or certain skus of games get shelved. It already happens. Think about that past, how often where there 100% complete games selling in Japan that would probably make a publisher money in the USA as well, yet publishers decided not to bother bringing them over. It was deemed not worth the return. The MLB games that I worked on, all complete for many years, as far as I know they don't sell them in Europe. It would be pure profit for them, but it was deemed not worth the return, other product took their place in the release pipe. There are countless other examples. "Guaranteed profits" do not "guarantee release", even on a per sku basis.

There's not much more I can say because I'm shackled by confidentiality, so I can't properly defend myself here. But I'd add two final things. I think you guys grossly underestimate how pissed publishers are that the PS3 is still $400 (value arguments are completely irrelevant), and likewise you guys also grossly underestimate how much the Wii is on publishers radars. A lot of these same people made a fortune with Nintendo many moons ago, they see the potential to finally do it again with them.

Anyways, lets wait and see. If the PS3 holds at $399 this holiday, then the effects should become visible late in the following year.

 

[RobertR1]

Anyways, lets wait and see. If the PS3 holds at $399 this holiday, then the effects should become visible late in the following year.

If the PS3 holds at $399 this year, they might as well start working on the bringing the PS4 to the market in a Wii like approach and hope for the best. I think a $100 cut might be asking too much but they will need atleast a $50 cut to remain relevant this holiday season. However, based on their projections and current sales, they will need a $100 to reach their goals.

 

[joker454]

If the PS3 holds at $399 this year, they might as well start working on the bringing the PS4 to the market in a Wii like approach and hope for the best. I think a $100 cut might be asking too much but they will need atleast a $50 cut to remain relevant this holiday season. However, based on their projections and current sales, they will need a $100 to reach their goals.

Yeah I doubt they would stay at $399. However, there is a very slight fear that they might because of their financial situation. Maybe they will be in a mood of everyone be dammed, we must deal with shareholders and the bottom line, and instead launch a "value bundle" at $399 with a big hdd and two games for the holidays, or something like that. Unlikely I think, but there still a a slight nagging fear that it could happen. That would be horrifically bad for us as value bundles alas are worthless to us. We are looking for the next tier of customer to join in the PS3 fold, and a value bundle does little to aide that.

 

[Mintmaster]

360 + PC + Wii + some PS3 will make more money than just dropping all of HD and being Wii only.

We're not saying drop all HD titles, we're saying drop one or two to make room for Wii.

I can tell you with certainty that this already has happened. I can't tell you what, where or who, but maybe after the holidays Which brings me back to my original point, it already happens, just not a whole lot currently.

Well, it must be an isolated circumstance that arose from an urgent need to develop this Wii title where the HD titles were already started. As a general strategy, though, it makes no sense to drop PS3.

I'm not underestimating the potential of the Wii, as it has nothing to do with my argument. I'm saying that you get the same sales from three 360+PS3 games as you can from five 360 titles. The former will cost substantially less. However you decide to split your resources between HD titles and Wii titles, the HD part will always get better ROI developing 360+PS3 titles instead of 360 exclusives (unless, of course, MS gives you a huge payout).

Think about that past, how often where there 100% complete games selling in Japan that would probably make a publisher money in the USA as well, yet publishers decided not to bother bringing them over. It was deemed not worth the return. The MLB games that I worked on, all complete for many years, as far as I know they don't sell them in Europe. It would be pure profit for them, but it was deemed not worth the return. There are countless other examples.

That's a poor analogy. PS3 versions of games nearly always sell 50-70% as much as the 360 version, and this is in the same market with the same ads. Japanese games in the US or MLB games in Europe may only manage 10% of the sales and would need new marketing to even get that much.

I think you guys grossly underestimate how pissed publishers are that the PS3 is still $400 (value arguments are completely irrelevant)

Maybe, but IMO it's only because they're looking at the PS2 era and wondering what could have been. I don't see why they'd be pissed off enough to throw away 40% of their HD revenue on any title except in isolated circumstances.

 

[obonicus]

There's not much more I can say because I'm shackled by confidentiality, so I can't properly defend myself here. But I'd add two final things. I think you guys grossly underestimate how pissed publishers are that the PS3 is still $400 (value arguments are completely irrelevant), and likewise you guys also grossly underestimate how much the Wii is on publishers radars. A lot of these same people made a fortune with Nintendo many moons ago, they see the potential to finally do it again with them.

Honestly, now you've lost me. Publishers left Nintendo for many, many reasons, some of which were Nintendo being the most difficult of the first-parties to deal with. They weren't forced to work with Sony due to external market forces, despite their desire to stick with Sony -- they were the major players in pushing the game into Sony's court (which Sony happily accepted). I have a hard, hard time believing that there's any sort of SNES-time nostalgia to any publisher decisions today -- hell, if anything I'm pretty sure pubs are wary of what happened last time Nintendo was dominant. I'm not saying they're not interested in the Wii, but not the way you're picturing things. Look at the new title offerings for the Wii. That's the shift in the Wii's direction -- it's much less PS360 port and more 'let's make a game in a genre we know has an audience' (which, to be fair, is how games on the other platforms usually work -- but the breadth of 'working genres' is slightly greater). Naturally, if The Conduit succeeds, that'll be a new genre in which they'll try to make games. Again, as I said, SEGA's the only 3rd party actually trying to figure out what that huge audience is interested in (well, and a few others, but Sega's trying hardest).

 

[RobertR1]

joker,

What I gather from your posts is that the PS3 revenue is already a known quantity. They have example after example on what a PS3 port will generate. With the currrent landscape these big guys are still losing money hand over fist so the the goal here is to break that trend. Going down the same path routinely ceratinly doesn't bring them big profits or into the black.

The Wii is the wildcard in all of this. For certain titles which might just break even or give a small profit on the PS3 port, they migth be better off using those resources as an opportunity cost for Wii projects in an effort to gain success on the platform. In fact, they could perhaps use the resources from one cancelled PS3 port and make multiple Wii giving them a broader shot as penetrating the Wii market with a successful titles.

The argument here seems to be "why cut down a known revenue stream?" The answer being, that the current business model is not generating the profit (not revenue) that it needs, so something has to give. Either the PS3 comes down in price, picks up a head of steam that translates into software sales and compliments the business model or the model gets tweaked.

Close?

 

[thatdude90210]

Here's some NPD data that might add to the discussion. Shaun White snowboarding has gone Wii exclusive. TW 09 had similar numbers, surprised that TW 10 has not gone Wii only, especially with the added attraction of Motion+. If the Guitar Hero franchise continues it's trend from GH3 to GHWT, they can probably cut the PS3 version in the future.

Btw, Shaun White snowboarding, Tiger Woods, Lego series, Rock Band, Sonic, and Guitar hero have shown that 3rd party software on the Wii do sell, it's just that multi-platform software don't find it's way to the Wii often. Looking at the number of titles that don't have Wii versions, this is basically is a chart of missed opportunities.

January 2009 Life to Date Numbers
Multiplatform

Assassin’s Creed - 2.3m (360), 1.15m (PS3)
Bioshock - 998k (360), 106k (PS3)
The Bourne Conspiracy - 103k (360), 83k (PS3)
Burnout Paradise - 371k (360) 306k (PS3)
Civilization Revolution - 96k (DS), 254k (360), 149k (PS3)
The Darkness - 284k (360), 133k (PS3)
Dark Sector - 139k (360), 97k (PS3)
Dead Space - 337k (360), 212k (PS3)
Disgaea - 45k (DS), 78k (PSP)
Dynasty Warriors 6 - 113k (360), 103k (PS3), 26k (PS2)
Eternal Sonata - 98k (360), 33k (PS3)
Fallout 3 - 1.14m (360), 452k (PS3)
Fight Night 3 - 1.19M (360) 526k (PS3)
Guitar Hero 3 - 2.37M (360) 830k (PS3) 2.75M (Wii)
Guitar Hero: World Tour - 924k (360) 466k (PS3) 1.39M (Wii)
Kane & Lynch - 300k (360), 197k (PS3)
Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol Encore 1 - 85k (360) 46k (PS3)
Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol Encore 2 - 20k (36o) 16k (PS3)
Lego Batman - 207k (360), 128k (PS3), 507k (PS2), 420k (Wii)
Lego Indiana Jones - 241k (360), 142k (PS3), 456k (PS2), 563k (Wii)
Mirror’s Edge - 207k (360), 125k (PS3)
Mortal Kombat vs DC - 592k (360), 512k (PS3)
N+ - 26k (DS), 21k (PSP)
Prince of Persia - 282k (360), 248k (PS3)
Pure - 158k (360) 92k (PS3)
Rock Band 1 - 1.65M (360) 648k (PS3) 1.03M (Wii)
Rock Band 2 - 1.02M (360) 384k (PS3) 353k (Wii)
Saints Row 2 - 480k (360), 188k (PS3)
Saints Row 2 [Collector's Edition only] - 30k (360), 11k (PS3)
Shaun White - 271k (360), 141k (PS3), 537k (Wii)
Silent Hill 5 - 73k (360), 84k (PS3)
Silent Hill Origins: 80k (PS2), 154k (PSP)
Skate - 606k (360) 202k (PS3)
Sonic Unleashed - 113k (360), 69k (PS3), 315k (Wii)
Soul Calibur 4 - 500k (360), 353k (PS3)
Space Invaders Extreme - 58k (DS), 34k (PSP)
Star Wars Force Unleashed - 823k (360) 464k (PS3) 626k (Wii) 175k (DS) 263k (PSP) 352k (PS2)
Tiger Woods 09 - 216k (360), 174k (PS3), 565k (Wii)
Unreal Tournament III - 164k (360) 219k (PS3)
The World Ends With You - 172k

 

[obonicus]

The argument here seems to be "why cut down a known revenue stream?"

That's part of it. The core of it is that right now, joker is saying that coding a new engine and downgrading assets from the 360 version is much cheaper than porting a game to PS3, since the Wii version can be horribly gimped and the platform holder won't raise a stink. And there are some of us who can't agree with those figures; they make little sense, especially considering sebbbi's breakdown of assets vs. code earlier in the thread.

The answer being, that the current business model is not generating the profit (not revenue) that it needs, so something has to give. Either the PS3 comes down in price, picks up a head of steam that translates into software sales and compliments the business model or the model gets tweaked.

And this is what the rest of us have a problem with. If the PS3 version isn't worth it, ROI-wise, compared to the Wii, it's hard to argue that the 360 version would be. The HD install-base just isn't that big -- abandoning the PS3 means dropping 40% of your install-base, considering PS3 owners buy games at the same proportion as 360 owners. There's no PS2 this generation, no machine you can bet all your chips on. The Wii's the closest thing.

 

[obonicus]

Here's some NPD data that might add to the discussion. Shaun White snowboarding has gone Wii exclusive. TW 09 had similar numbers, surprised that TW 10 has not gone Wii only, especially with the added attraction of Motion+. If the Guitar Hero franchise continues it's trend from GH3 to GHWT, they can probably cut the PS3 version in the future.

GH:WT did about half of what the 360 one did. It's quite an indictment. The Wii doing well on these does speak to the possibility of them becoming Wii exclusives, though -- if they weren't selling so well on all platforms. (Why Rock Band PS3 did so poorly in comparison I have no idea, though, was it the 1-month exclusivity? Also, the Wii version was released much later, IIRC.)

Btw, Shaun White snowboarding, Tiger Woods, Lego series, Rock Band, Sonic, and Guitar hero have shown that 3rd party software on the Wii do sell, it's just that multi-platform software don't find it's way to the Wii often. Looking at the number of titles that don't have Wii versions, this is basically is a chart of missed opportunities.

It's hard to come to any conclusions based on these numbers. Where's Call of Duty? Any of the other EA sports titles? How did Quantum of Solace do across all platforms? If we need to dispell the notion that the Wii is the 'expanded audience console' (and no one really knows what they want) then 2 sports games, 2 music games and 2 kiddie games won't accomplish that. Maybe they did well across all SKUs, but these have just too many gaps to come to any sort of conclusion.

 

[Arwin]

If the Guitar Hero franchise continues it's trend from GH3 to GHWT, they can probably cut the PS3 version in the future.

Or maybe the PS3 version is actually becoming more important. The percentage of PS3 sales in GH3 is a fair bit smaller than for GHWT. If that trend continues, they probably realliy can't skip the PS3 version. Especially since they probably spend a fraction of what other devs spend on coding.

 

[Mintmaster]

Btw, Shaun White snowboarding, Tiger Woods, Lego series, Rock Band, Sonic, and Guitar hero have shown that 3rd party software on the Wii do sell, it's just that multi-platform software don't find it's way to the Wii often.

I think it shows exactly what I was saying. Unless you have a hit franchise from the PS2/GC era that you can milk, you're going to have a tough time getting 1M+ on the Wii. Rock Band was new IP, but the second installment didn't go anywhere on the Wii.

I'm not saying that ports or shovelware are bad investments. They are cheap and I'm sure make an okay profit. What I'm saying is that it's really hard to get a hit on the Wii new IP. From the list liolio gave, we have in Raving Rabbits, Shaun White, a few mini-game and Wii-Sports-like titles, and few others (Mama Cook Off, High School Musical, and Rock Band). Most of these new IPs barely broke 1M, and some of them still piggybacked onto other hits.

So again, there hasn't been a lot of sales in third party, new IP on the Wii. If you have a cash cow, go ahead and milk it; otherwise, don't expect much return on Wii exclusives and just be happy when it happens.

 

[joker454]

Close?

Yup

Publishers left Nintendo for many, many reasons, some of which were Nintendo being the most difficult of the first-parties to deal with.

They certainly don't miss the Nintendo cartridge dictatorship, but they do look fondly back at money earned with them, relatively speaking. Yeah Nintendo eventually became appalling to deal with and many were thrilled to flee to the Playstation which was better in every way shape and form (simple to code for, cheap media, reasonable price, etc..). But that was then, Nintendo is much better now. Well...their Q/A is still a pain in the ass to deal with, but they are mostly better, and we don't have to play cartridge roulette any more.

That's part of it. The core of it is that right now, joker is saying that coding a new engine and downgrading assets from the 360 version is much cheaper than porting a game to PS3, since the Wii version can be horribly gimped and the platform holder won't raise a stink.

By this stage in the game we all have Wii engines already, but unlike 360/PS3 engines, there isn't anywhere near as much pressure to make the Wii engine state of the art, as you say because the platform holders don't care as much and because there is less potential in the hardware anyways. So 'engine cost' on Wii is really small, compared to 360/PS3 which must remain cutting edge.

Looking at the number of titles that don't have Wii versions, this is basically is a chart of missed opportunities.

Bingo I'll grab some sales figures from that chart to mention three different cases. First:

Assassin’s Creed - 2.3m (360), 1.15m (PS3)

Obviously if anyone tells you that they won't make more of that game for PS3 then they fully deserve to be bitch slapped. Of course big sellers will always be made, it would be lunacy to drop them. Next:

Mirror’s Edge - 207k (360), 125k (PS3)

With those kinds of numbers, there isn't a whole lot of point doing just one sku. If there had to be cuts made, then it might make more sense to just drop that product entirely. Finally:

Skate - 606k (360) 202k (PS3)

This one falls more in line with what I've been talking about. The 360 sku is decent, but the PS3 sku is really bad. To me, that's a candidate to have the PS3 sku dropped, and instead shift those people to make a proper Wii game.

Everything so far has been status quo. Make 360 version, port to PS3, make crappy Wii port and/or even crappier Wii shovelware, rinse and repeat. It's been that way for ages now. It's mostly works and mostly makes money, but I think the monetary situation could be improved.

 

[RobertR1]

I think it shows exactly what I was saying. Unless you have a hit franchise from the PS2/GC era that you can milk, you're going to have a tough time getting 1M+ on the Wii. Rock Band was new IP, but the second installment didn't go anywhere on the Wii.

I'm not saying that ports or shovelware are bad investments. They are cheap and I'm sure make an okay profit. What I'm saying is that it's really hard to get a hit on the Wii new IP. From the list liolio gave, we have in Raving Rabbits, Shaun White, a few mini-game and Wii-Sports-like titles, and few others (Mama Cook Off, High School Musical, and Rock Band). Most of these new IPs barely broke 1M, and some of them still piggybacked onto other hits.

So again, there hasn't been a lot of sales in third party, new IP on the Wii. If you have a cash cow, go ahead and milk it; otherwise, don't expect much return on Wii exclusives and just be happy when it happens.

Perhaps as stated many times, the big 3rd party publishers bet on the wrong horse. They thought they could go the HD route and give the Wii crappy ports and end up fine. The profits from that model clearly didn't work as expected. EA Active is a perfect example of a mindset change towards the Wii. They created a Wii only experience by creatively concentrating on what it'd take to grab the core Wii audience. They seem to be doing well with it.

For a company to be success with the Wii they have to have a good mix of Wii specific titles that:
1. cater to the core audience (and learn quickly that the core audience for the Wii is NOT the same folk on HD consoles or the vocal minority Nintendo fanboys from prior generations)
2. ports of well known successful franchises
3. shovelware to fill in the blanks.

For the longest time, they were content with numbers 2 and 3. Their Wii only efforts were generally quite crap. The Wii audience rejected their offerings and they went crying "only Nintendo games sell on the Wii..." I wouldn't be shocked to see one of the major 3d party publishers have breakthrough success on the Wii. When it does happen, it won't be because of some black magic of Wii owners embracing 3rd party, it'll be due to the custom catered expereience for them.

 

[obonicus]

Skate - 606k (360) 202k (PS3)

This one falls more in line with what I've been talking about. The 360 sku is decent, but the PS3 sku is really bad. To me, that's a candidate to have the PS3 sku dropped, and instead shift those people to make a proper Wii game.

Actually, thinking about it, both Skate and GH3 underperformed on PS3, and I believe both were buggy ports (I may be wrong, mostly recalling things from memory). If this bears out, this'd suggest that there's a reason to try and achieve parity for more than just 'not pissing off Sony' -- people who buy games just don't want games that don't run well. Word of mouth is just that powerful.

 

[obonicus]

Perhaps as stated many times, the big 3rd party publishers bet on the wrong horse. They thought they could go the HD route and give the Wii crappy ports and end up fine. The profits from that model clearly didn't work as expected. EA Active is a perfect example of a mindset change towards the Wii. They created a Wii only experience by creatively concentrating on what it'd take to grab the core Wii audience. They seem to be doing well with it.

It's a mindset change in that EA followed firmly in the steps set by Nintendo, steps that even Majesco managed to reap rewards from. And then they are making Dead Space Extraction, a 'guided shooter' in the Dead Space universe, since Capcom and a couple of Sega efforts actually paid off. Again, following.

For a company to be success with the Wii they have to have a good mix of Wii specific titles that:
1. cater to the core audience (and learn quickly that the core audience for the Wii is NOT the same folk on HD consoles or the vocal minority Nintendo fanboys from prior generations)

That's exactly the problem. The 'core' audience of the Wii is the expanded audience. What do you get when you cater specifically to people who don't play videogames and fail to 'upsell' them? Well, people who aren't that much into videogames, except the type they bought the console for. The Wii managed to tap into two underserved markets: party game fans and 'fitness' fans. Nintendo tried to find a new untapped market with Wii Music, only to find that that market is actually overserved and that just because they're the 'expanded audience', they're not morons.

What you're asking for is particularly difficult because, for all of Mario Kart's success, I don't think it's successful as a bridge game. If you bought your Wii for Wii Fit because of some promise of weight loss/fitness you probably won't be that interested in racing around in mushroom cars. And if Nintendo has trouble bridging the market, what hope do 3rd parties have? Sega's forgoing the bridge entirely and is leaping in head-first with a slew of 'core games' -- and it hasn't worked out particularly well so far. Again, let's see what happens with The Conduit.

2. ports of well known successful franchises

But they're not doing ports. Overlord for Wii was an entirely new game. Dead Rising for Wii was an entirely new game. RE:Chronicles 2 has nothing in common with RE5 except backstory.

Unless you mean music games; at this point I imagine that it's not the Wii that's getting the ports.

 

[Mintmaster]

Skate - 606k (360) 202k (PS3)

This one falls more in line with what I've been talking about. The 360 sku is decent, but the PS3 sku is really bad. To me, that's a candidate to have the PS3 sku dropped, and instead shift those people to make a proper Wii game.

First of all, I don't agree with you because losing a quarter of your sales to save the cost of a port doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Skate is undoubtedly using a fairly generic MP engine that won't take many additional resources to add PS3 compatibility.

But suppose it was 100k for PS3. How good are predictions (at the time PS3 decisions are made) in figuring out Skate will be one of the MP titles where the PS3 version will sell in a lower ratio than average? I don't think it's that easy to figure this stuff out, and for the most part you just have to look at past experience and trends. At this point, the userbase ratio is not going to change much, and you have to assume that PS3 will get 50-70% of 360 sales if you make a title MP.

As for not porting a lot of games to the Wii, well, those that were ported didn't do so well except for EA Sports. COD:WaW did about 20% as much on the Wii. The NFS games did 25-40%. Given how different the hardware and UI is on the Wii, it can't be that cheap to port these games over.

I guess we'll see what happens, but I don't see more than a few third party hits in the next few years that aren't based on existing cash cows.

 

[thatdude90210]

I think it shows exactly what I was saying. Unless you have a hit franchise from the PS2/GC era that you can milk, you're going to have a tough time getting 1M+ on the Wii. Rock Band was new IP, but the second installment didn't go anywhere on the Wii.

Rock Band is a bad example. Rock Band 1 on the Wii was released on June 22, 2008, over 1/2 a year (and a holiday) after the PS3 and 360 versions (Nov 20, 2007).

Rock Band 2 was late again on the Wii, arriving Dec 18 2008. That's 3 months after the 360 version and 2 months after the PS3 version. It missed most of the holiday shopping, plus RB 1 was only 1/2 year old. It still almost caught the PS3 version by Jan 2009.

One can make the argument that the Wii should have been the lead platform.

 

[draconian]

Yup

Skate - 606k (360) 202k (PS3)

This one falls more in line with what I've been talking about. The 360 sku is decent, but the PS3 sku is really bad. To me, that's a candidate to have the PS3 sku dropped, and instead shift those people to make a proper Wii game.

Everything so far has been status quo. Make 360 version, port to PS3, make crappy Wii port and/or even crappier Wii shovelware, rinse and repeat. It's been that way for ages now. It's mostly works and mostly makes money, but I think the monetary situation could be improved.

Npd is only US. I'm sure skate sold just as many copies in the EU. So all other territories combined, it probably did 500k worldwide.

 

[draconian]

Why Joker's case makes very little sense

Not only that, but how would the publisher know that the 360 and ps3 version will do bad?

Let's say you're making a game for the 360. Let's also assume that the publisher thinks that the ps3 should at least do 200k worldwide for it to be worthwhile. This then implies that they think the 360 version should do at most 400k worldwide(in the best case scenario for the 360 version. From what we've seen from annual reports, the 360 version seems to about 20-30% better worldwide than the ps3).

So, the publisher thinks this multi-platform game is going to do a combined 600k worldwide and they decided to fund this project? I just don't buy that. I think if the publisher thought 600k was all they could get, not only would the ps3 version not be made, but neither would the 360 version.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Exactly, that's the point we've been making over and over again. In these marginal cases where the PS3 version isn't worth its cost, the whole project is probably a bad investment. Couple that with the difficulty in predicting when a PS3 version will underperform like Skate did, or when a game will tank badly across all platforms like Mirror's Edge did and this "to PS3 or not to PS3" debate is pretty pointless. If it's worth risking the cash on an HD game then you've already determined the PS3 version is worth doing. If you want to invest more heavily in Wii games you can do that by paring back your HD game projects overall.