duckroll said:
I'm a little confused as to what you're referring to. Cing is a very small developer, and none of their games are even of "semi-high" production values. A game like Hotel Dusk has very low production values and sold AMAZINGLY well both in Japan (over 200k) and worldwide (iirc ~100-200k in the US).
What is unfortunate is that all their recent titles bombed hard. Again, Another Code R, Last Window - all total bombs. It's definitely not the production value of their games which killed them, but their failure to sell. We could blame Tecmo and Nintendo for lack of marketing, but ultimately what's done is done.
Production values is as much the human costs of the game as it is how the game actually turns out -- and honestly, if you compare these games to the equivalent cheapo $5 PC games, you'll see that CING's games generally blow them out of the water.
Here's the full credits list for Hotel Dusk:
Producer Takuya Miyagawa
Coproducers Satoshi Kira
Coproducers Shinya Saito
Director Taisuke Kanasaki
Game Design Rika Suzuki
Main Programming Motofumi Nishimura
Planning Assistants Yuhki Tsuruta
Planning Assistants Shigeru Komine
Programming Dai Yamanoguchi
Programming Tomozou Tamura
Programming Kazuya Matsubara
Character Design Taisuke Kanasaki
Animation Taisuke Kanasaki
Map Design Jheon In Te
Map Design Koichi Kido
Illustration Keisuke Sakamoto
Artwork Chiharu Sakiyama
Coordination Nagako Ikuta
Project Management Hiroshi Sato
Sound Satoshi Okubo
Sound Yuhki Mori
2-D Design Miya Hiroshige
Executive Producer Satoru Iwata
If everyone made an average of $40,000 (probably on the low side), then that's $600,000 in just human resources assuming the game 9 months to make.
Assuming CING got $5 on each game (probably on the high side, especially considering how much these games have been marked down, how much the retailers are taking, how much Nintendo is taking, etc.) and sold 350,000 copies, then that would net them $1,750,000...over the ENTIRE life of the product thus far, which is probably longer than it took to make the game to begin with!
Live on razor-thin margins like that for long without any reserve cash and see where it gets you: oh that's right, bankruptcy.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that I'm only including 20 of the 23 people listed.