As to the public's fascination with WWII, it was due to Saving Private Ryan. Medal of Honor came out after that, and everybody sort of copied that. James Bond didn't do too well after Goldeneye, and Sci-Fi usually requires coming up with something from scratch. WWII is very concrete and doesn't require coming up with the overall story. They just need to do the individual's story, and then place them in well-known battles.
That said, I'm glad there's a de-emphasis on WWII shooters, too. One of the main reasons I was looking forward to The Conduit (along with the controls) was that it was
not a WWII FPS. That's pretty rare on the Wii, unlike on PS360 where you've got the Bioshocks, Rainbow Sixes, Riddick, GRAW, etc. With Call of Duty and Medal of Honor moving on, it does look like the end of major WWII FPS, for the moment.
For anyone who wants to know Pachter's breakdown on game prices, here's what he said for a standard $60 game.
$12 - retailer
$12 (PS360) / $10 (Wii) - console manufacturer
Following are quite variable:
~$10 for R&D (basically overhead for keeping people on the clock; varies based on how much the game sells, since salary is a fixed cost that doesn't increase with more sales)
~$8-$9 for marketing (~15% of what they think they'll sell based on a $60 price)
Rest of it goes to publisher. The actual question was how much goes to the developer, though, and that wasn't clearly stated. Probably has a whole lot of variance based on the contract, though. Some contracts may not even be based on sales (e.g. Factor 5's deal with Sony for Lair).
By the way, nice Professor Layton hat in the background.
