spectrum48k

One piece of news that came out this week was that Sony pleaded with third-party developers not to abandon its struggling platform. That change in attitude is a marked difference compared to the arrogance of past years. The argument is that the PS 3 will show its strength as developers learn how to make games for it. But developers know they can staff four or five Wii teams with the same number of people it takes to make one PS 3 game. We may have a glut of Wii games soon, but that’s not as bad as not having enough games on the PS 3.

The Xbox 360 is going to have a good season with games like “Mass Effect” and “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” still to come. Yes, I know it’s also on the PS 3. But clearly it will sell more units on the Xbox 360. Sony managed to crack the top ten finally with a PS 3 title, “Heavenly Sword.” But beyond Ratchet & Clank, it’s unclear what is going to be a big seller for the company this season. We’ll have to see the October numbers, but I expect that the Halo 3 blast radius is still going to have an effect, as will the entry of the $399 PS 3. As Frazier says, content is going to move hardware. With Super Smash Bros. pushing out, Microsoft looks like it has some of the strongest games yet to come in the season. Nintendo still has Super Mario Galaxy, and Sony will have to cross its fingers on Ratchet.


source:
Dean’s Take on NPD numbers for September - A+E Interactive: Your Bay Area hangout for gaming, music, movies, culture -

mart360

Not surprised!

i had a christmas release list from gamestation te other day,

20 odd releases between now and chrimbo, on the 360 & ps3

10 were cross platform games, so would be a port from the 360 as its the easiest one to code for at the mo.

5 were 360 specific

5 were Ps3 specific.


now some will argue that its a healthy boost for the platform, but given that coders arn't adding extra stuff in the port overs, its an expensive way to do things.

as much as iv'e liked Sony stuff in the past, there seems to be a marked shift from ease of use / compatibility & customer base to volume manufacturer and stuff the consumer if they don't like it


Mart

spectrum48k

Video game history is strewn with manufacturers who've had seemingly unassailable market share, then dropped the ball. Of course, they've all done it at some point:

Atari - 2600VCS > 5200 > Jaguar
Nintendo - SuperNES > Nintendo64
Sega - Megadrive > Saturn > Dreamcast
Sony - PS2 > PS3


Perilous business, video game consoles. I've often thought, wouldn't it be great, given the huge developement costs these days, to produce a single open system with a common API. That way money doesn't have to be wasted porting this to that and vice versa. Lo-and-behold, EA are thinking along the same lines....


Here's a surprise: Life would be a lot easier for EA if they didn't have to port all of their games to so many different platforms. In fact, they'd be happier with just one. Gerhard Florin, EA's head of international publishing, told the BBC, "We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible." Well, count this as one of the many times when we're happy we're living in reality, rather than an alternate, EA-crafted dimension. We probably don't have anything to worry about though, Florin says he thinks dedicated consoles could be around for "up to 15 years."


Console manufacturers win - shared hardware development costs.

Developers win - common API akin to DirectX, reducing game developement costs and complexity. No more time spent porting code from one platform to another. Reduced risk - no more gambles on risky platforms.

Consumers win - more games, more quality - by that I mean less time spent by developers on re-inventing the wheel, more time on playability.

There's con's of course when it was tried in the past, with MSX and 3DO, but I agree with EA that the pro's will outweigh them.

mart360

We have a common APi at the mo, its called the PC

and look at the problems its got,

the biggest problem is every manufacturer wants the biggest slice of the pot, so they have proproerty software/ hardware/ drm etc,

I thought the whole selling point of consoles was you put in the disk/ sw/ or what ever, turn it on and it works.. no wrong config or not enough memory etc...

mart

hux309

Plus ea are bound to say this, look at the dev's they've been buying up lately, i swear they are gearing up for world domination.

Anyhoo this is in part why the 360 is a success, it is basically a pc so games are much easier to port over, this is the future for consoles.

spectrum48k

you can't compare a PC with a video game console. Besides, the common API is Windows - not the PC. Imagine where we'd be with lots of different operating systems ? Games and apps written for this OS but not for that one ? Nightmare

The hardware spec would be locked down as well as a common API.

spectrum48k

I imagine the majority of developers would LOVE this, not just EA. It makes life a LOT easier for developers who seem to be here one minute and go out of business the next.

If EA have the power to buy devs, good look to them, hoever that doesn't mean I agree with their games policy eg. Maddon <insert year> !!

Swen6

I had the 3DO, cracking console, just not marketed well enough, still had the best Fifa i've seen, i think there were 3 companies making it, Panasonic, Goldstar and Sanyo. Problem was the first 3DO (Panasonics) was best, quality got worse, after all i think it was £300, Panasonic made a second version, not as good, plus half the hardware never made it here.

But with EA, hasn't one of the key men involved in developing and designing Xbox just jumped to EA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DO_Int...ve_Multiplayer

messiah

Peter Moore - and given the 360's reliability, I dont think many people will be wanting a repeat performance.

Not sure this "common platform" could be agreed on anyway - nice idea, but there'd be too many people wanting their say in the hardware configuration of it.

Swen6

If you read down on the link i posted, the 3DO was the design of the exHead of EA, i'm sure they won't want to **** it up twice.

kernel

Agreed, just imagine the difficulty choicing the delivery medium Bluray or HDDVD. What happens about keeping abreast of new hardware developments and how can you differentiate your hardware from the one made by your competitor? Until one manufacturer wins out we at least get a hardware battle so we get powerful consoles rather than commercially neutured ones.

spectrum48k

yeah, Trip Hawkins - ahead of his time. Think he's in the mobile phone games market now. He did the original Need For Speed!

As for Peter Moore, who knows ? Perhaps EA might join the video game hardware game ?

spectrum48k

like any console, any hardware developments have to wait for the next iteration of the console hardware. Every 5-7 years just like now.

You wouldn't need to. Its not about the hardware. No profit is generally made from the hardware. All the profit is in the games. Developers would pay a licence fee to the consortium.

"Powerful consoles" sometimes this equates to a machine so difficult to program, there's very little games for it - so few people buy it. PS3 for example?

"Commercially neutered" ? Are PC graphics cards commercially neutered because they all comply with DirectX ? Think about it, lots of manufacturers producing different graphics cards, all designed to run with DirectX in mind. Game developers need not worry who the manufacturer is, or worry about what bespoke hardware they have, safe in the knowledge it'll comply with DirectX standardisation.

PeteBrant

Sorry, are we taking the blog of one persons opinion of the industry as fact now?

PeteBrant

As for the EA wanting a single plafotrm - Publisher in "we don't want to pay licensing costs" shocker.

Not going to happen, not for the foresseable anyway.

messiah

Its just EA wanting to make more profits, like they don't make enough at present...

spectrum48k

eh ?

The thread is simply discussing the possibility of an open standard in video game console development, no more, no less. We've moved on from the inital link about Sony begging developers - Keep up

Besides, it would seem apparent from the number of "delayed titles" that a lot of developers have held off on PS3 development until more units have been sold. Capcom ndicated this recently.

bob269

Depends on how far in to the future we are looking, i'd say in years to come tv's will be integrated with gaming capabilities. Maybe using some common web based api

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

Personally I think that if the PS3 *is* dead in the water - or at least floundering... then this doesn't help the sales of BD DVDs does it?

gallois

does anyone know if the PS3 is the cheapest blu-ray player at the moment? is it worth getting just for that?

spectrum48k

The PS3 isn't dead, but it's certainly in need of a little C.P.R.

I've no doubt given time, it'll start to produce the goods, but right now its struggling.

On another note, I was watching the newly released demo of Gran Turismo 5: Prologue (which is available to anyone with a Japanese PSN account) and whilst it's obviously hard to tell from the demo perspective, I was really disappointed . Cars are still bouncing off each other and the even the soundFX sound the same, but obviously you get the bonus of internet multi-play. This game will sell bucketloads on its name alone, but iI doubt it'll be forcing me to buy a Playstation 3.

Scotsman

iTrader: (3)

I'm still p*ssed off at Sony for not releasing GT for the PSP - a title they showed a lot of at the PSP launch

Chris L

I don't think that the PS3 is dead and buried just yet. Certainly, Sony has misjudged things, but it is still a very fine piece of kit and they also just signed up NCsoft - one of the biggest names in online gaming to develop games for the PS3.