Cross platform games are still typically multiple teams so they aren't cheap to make, the risk on the new console sku's is still there. Rather than have any such risk they are better off with one team, one sku. Also whether or not publishers are doing ok is very questionable as most games still don't turn a profit. The only way this can change is with more paying customers.
Business Approach Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
- Thread starter BRiT
- Start date
Cross platform games are still typically multiple teams so they aren't cheap to make, the risk on the new console sku's is still there. Rather than have any such risk they are better off with one team, one sku. Also whether or not publishers are doing ok is very questionable as most games still don't turn a profit. The only way this can change is with more paying customers.
Kinda of like the chicken or the egg dilemma. Would they be making more remastered games if the systems were actually backward compatible? Would be cheaper & easier for publishers to just re-lease the same games marketed to the newer systems. So they could advertise it by saying buy it now & it will work on the newer system. Seems more profitable than spending thousands or millions remastering the games.
Tommy McClain
Tommy McClain
Assuming the next gen of consoles remains on x86 it obviously makes the problem of backwards compatibility that much easier. If the new consoles have a memory subsystem that can handle the data flow of the current machines via a software profile or some such then backwards compatibility is a no brainer. MS does have an interesting OS topology on XB1 that could make BC easier as well. And it wouldn't even add as much cost next go round since the architecture itself is based upon the same tech.
I can see how it makes great business sense going into the future, especially as it will help lock in a customer to a specific ecosystems whether it's Sony or MS. It does give less incentive to switch to a competitor's offering if I'm able to retain the games purchased for my platform of choice and continue playing them on the successor. For those with limited incomes it might be the determining factor on which console to buy. Devs will still need to develop new titles for the platforms in order for the platform to grow in sales, but the transition could be much blurrier than it is now. BC does pretty much mean that remastering of hit games to sell on new platforms will likely net less sales of the remastered game, but it could lead to a quicker adoption of a new console.
Instead of remastering hit games the games for the new system devs may start to develop games with both last gen and next gen consoles in mind. This means that instead of buying a game for a specific platform, I buy it for a specific ecosystem. The game running on last gen hardware plays normally, on the next gen console I want upgraded assets and a higher resolution. This creates cross compatibility with games released around the time of the new console launch and could entice people to upgrade earlier than later. This is really only likely if console hardware cycles get down to 3 - 4 years creating tiers of consoles. Doubtful.
I can see how it makes great business sense going into the future, especially as it will help lock in a customer to a specific ecosystems whether it's Sony or MS. It does give less incentive to switch to a competitor's offering if I'm able to retain the games purchased for my platform of choice and continue playing them on the successor. For those with limited incomes it might be the determining factor on which console to buy. Devs will still need to develop new titles for the platforms in order for the platform to grow in sales, but the transition could be much blurrier than it is now. BC does pretty much mean that remastering of hit games to sell on new platforms will likely net less sales of the remastered game, but it could lead to a quicker adoption of a new console.
Instead of remastering hit games the games for the new system devs may start to develop games with both last gen and next gen consoles in mind. This means that instead of buying a game for a specific platform, I buy it for a specific ecosystem. The game running on last gen hardware plays normally, on the next gen console I want upgraded assets and a higher resolution. This creates cross compatibility with games released around the time of the new console launch and could entice people to upgrade earlier than later. This is really only likely if console hardware cycles get down to 3 - 4 years creating tiers of consoles. Doubtful.
So platform exclusive then?
For that to happen Xbox needs to be doing even worse. MS has about 4 million consoles sold to customers. That is a pretty big market; given the fact that this consists of early adopters, enthusiasts and fanboys. These are the kind of people that will buy a medium-good game without hesitation. So to not target those people would be really stupid, form as business perspective.
Now, if we were talking 1.5 years on the market and only 4 million sold, then it's another case as most of those owners will have switched to better alternatives.
Conclusion: it's way too early to abandon a struggling platform. So exclusive development is still more expensive at this point.
I meant cross generation, that's usually still multiple teams.
I expect that to be much easier going forwards though, even if BC isn't included. An x86 CPU + PC GPU architecture is going to minimise up-port effort if you're targeting old machines. XB4k and PS5 will take ports from XB1 and PS4 very nicely I'd have thought, unless someone's trying something really funky. And if you're targeting XB1 and PS4, may as well target PC, which'll give another vector for XB4k and PS5 ports.
That is assuming Sony and MS goes with x86 and PC GPU architecture again?
They could change back to PowerPC* or maybe some ARM* variant or some new secret super duper solution?
No need to point out how they are not suited, its an example of what is not x86
I think Microsoft should bundle all their 1st party published games, and cut the price:
Xbox One + Kinect, + Forza 5 + Ryse + Killer Instinct + Dead Rising + TitanFall.
If they price this at 349, then I am sure that a lot of Xbox fans will get it.
Also, make all those games free for existing users if they renew Xbox Live for 1 year, most Xbox fans have those games anyway.
If they do this, then I am sure Xbox could sell a big percentage of the millions of warehoused consoles. They don't even need to change the boxes; as they games will be offered on a voucher; only upon activating the consoles, they voucher could be used, so no reselling
Xbox One + Kinect, + Forza 5 + Ryse + Killer Instinct + Dead Rising + TitanFall.
If they price this at 349, then I am sure that a lot of Xbox fans will get it.
Also, make all those games free for existing users if they renew Xbox Live for 1 year, most Xbox fans have those games anyway.
If they do this, then I am sure Xbox could sell a big percentage of the millions of warehoused consoles. They don't even need to change the boxes; as they games will be offered on a voucher; only upon activating the consoles, they voucher could be used, so no reselling
At this point I think that'd just be causing development headaches for no benefit, unless they suddenly offer vastly superior price/performance options. That's more a 'what will next-gen be?' question. I think it safe to assume that, unless something crops up to suggest otherwise, they'll make the same choices they made this gen next-gen based on the same reasoning and a significant degree of BC and cross-platform with PC will be a given. Obviously if they choose to go with an alien architecture, BC suddenly becomes a huge cost and we're back to every point raised in the 'Value of BC' thread. I think Joker's assertion was predicated on a PC-like architecture.
PS Now like features will likely also benefit hugely by having games already basically be PC compatible. I heard that Beyond: Two Souls is also getting a HD release. There are quite a lot of these now and part of the reason could be PS Now. It will also allow them to compare how the HD release on PS4 sets off against PS Now revenu, now and over time. I think that's smart.
Cerny says Sony struggled with the decision to implement a mandatory hard drive, and to go with 8GB RAM instead of 4GB...puts the price tag as $1 billion
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/07...+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
I guess this can tell us that 4GB GDDR5 ~cost of an HDD though. So, maybe ~$30. Not trivial.
Yeah good moves, and astonishing what bad decisions MS made this gen. Now owning an X1, I find I could care less about HDMI in (heck, I'm among the growing crowd of cord cutters, roku is essentially my TV service), or really Kinect, and yet MS must have spent countless dollars on R&D (and BOM in Kinect's case) on these things, that could have gone into a better GPU, the heart of the system.
I saw a post on GAF that said so much for me, something like (my bolding) "owning both consoles, Xbox feels like a more premium experience in every aspect except the games"
Doesn't that say it all about MS misplaced priorities this gen. There's a lot they're good at, but they neglected the very heart of the system.
Now, MS will be fighting for their lives the entire gen, and the only way to win market share is to cut the console price, costing themselves billions. It just boggles my mind the executive stupidity.
The 8GB decision single-handedly won the generation for PS4 so far...much like the 256-512 decision did for MS last gen.
Although, I think a 4GB PS4 could have done pretty well as well. The effective RAM difference would have been 3.5GB vs 5GB, and the PS4 still would have maintained the current GPU advantage. Well, lets just say 8GB sealed the deal well and good, at least.
For MS, the decision to not enable those two redundant CU's is just huge for me. Clearly they screwed up, yet they still had a late chance to mitigate the damage, for probably almost nominal cost, and passed on it.
Well, I think Spencer is a good head for Xbox, unfortunately this gen he's been dealt a poor hardware hand that he cant do anything about now.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/07...+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
I guess this can tell us that 4GB GDDR5 ~cost of an HDD though. So, maybe ~$30. Not trivial.
Yeah good moves, and astonishing what bad decisions MS made this gen. Now owning an X1, I find I could care less about HDMI in (heck, I'm among the growing crowd of cord cutters, roku is essentially my TV service), or really Kinect, and yet MS must have spent countless dollars on R&D (and BOM in Kinect's case) on these things, that could have gone into a better GPU, the heart of the system.
I saw a post on GAF that said so much for me, something like (my bolding) "owning both consoles, Xbox feels like a more premium experience in every aspect except the games"
Doesn't that say it all about MS misplaced priorities this gen. There's a lot they're good at, but they neglected the very heart of the system.
Now, MS will be fighting for their lives the entire gen, and the only way to win market share is to cut the console price, costing themselves billions. It just boggles my mind the executive stupidity.
The 8GB decision single-handedly won the generation for PS4 so far...much like the 256-512 decision did for MS last gen.
Although, I think a 4GB PS4 could have done pretty well as well. The effective RAM difference would have been 3.5GB vs 5GB, and the PS4 still would have maintained the current GPU advantage. Well, lets just say 8GB sealed the deal well and good, at least.
For MS, the decision to not enable those two redundant CU's is just huge for me. Clearly they screwed up, yet they still had a late chance to mitigate the damage, for probably almost nominal cost, and passed on it.
Well, I think Spencer is a good head for Xbox, unfortunately this gen he's been dealt a poor hardware hand that he cant do anything about now.
Xbox 360 launching 1 to 1.5 year earlier, at about half the price, with better third party support as well as exclusives, as well as the press on their side is what 'won' the generation for Xbox 360.
The xbox one is a premium console and the games are great on it and I've already had experiances that I couldn't have on the ps4 or any other console. Killer instinct and dead rising along with ryse and of course titan fall were great premium games for different reasons . On the flip side my friends with ps4s have sat through horrible droughts , some of them have also ended up with the xbox one .
Sony got lucky that the backlash was about trivial things and not about games this time around otherwise they would have been buried quickly .
I'm hoping MS continues forward and implements its game sharing features because it seems at least one company wants console gaming to catch up to where pc gaming was in 2002.
The current generation does not support your opinion. Development seems alot easier, the hardware is very much alike and the most expensive part of game development, content*, can be easier shared across more platforms.
For the next generation consoles this generation already showed the future. Cross platform games that covers the earlier generation and sells the next with a superior experience.
BC as a better business option never seemed less likely than now.
*as I have read it content always was the expensive part of development, is there any examples on how the costs are divided
Sure sure. I get all that. Even agree with parts. It's just a shame I feel like the hardware is underpowered. And I think (and it looks) like they're going to have a hard time overcoming that with consumers.
PS3-360, ~same price, ~same worldwide sales
PS4-XBO, ~same price (now), XBO seemingly getting outsold heavily.
What changed? Just the power. Unless you still want to blame the DRM debacle, which I feel would be misplaced.
And just personally, I know my tech, and so I know the GPU is a bit of a weakling, and I dont like that feeling. Especially when, including a couple years of Live, and even with various discounts totaling $150, I still dropped $600 on the system. For that price, it really needs to have a premium GPU.
It's built with a 7770. For that price I think it's going to need to be $299 sooner rather than later. $299 seems about fair (a good deal) for the technology I know is in the box.
I hate to fuel your biased rant, but what is a premium game?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_4_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_One_games
If one has a horrible droughts, what does the other have?
Well, this "trivial thing" is now back in full force this week after Microsoft's keynote at Develop. Expect the whole narrative to be back among the community.
Interestingly, Sony said they considered not having an HDD (just a small flash) while MS considered not having an ODD. Any of these two decision would have killed them, respectively.
Actually it does support my opinion. Aren't people wondering why there is such a drought of games on the new consoles that are so easy to develop for? They are basically pc's right, same hardware that devs have already been coding on for many years now, so where are the games? The reason is that no publisher wants to launch premium (read: expensive) AAA content to a tiny audience of ~10 million people. That's why y'all are waiting, and will continue to wait for games because the audience base has to build. That's a direct consequence of forcing publishers to start over from zero with an entirely new audience. The sad irony to this time honored console model is by the time the audience is built large enough for the games to come, the hardware will now be so old as to be comically outdated, so any advantage of no bc/fc on the hardware front is actually totally lost. If there was bc/fc then you would be playing new games right now rather than waiting on remixes of old games. Incidentally that's also why there are all these remixes of games coming out, because it's not cost effective to launch new games to this tiny new console audience but they have to make their presence felt so as not to become irrelevant, hence remixes like GTA 5, Last Of Us, etc.
Having an established base from day one would completely change all that, it would rewrite the rules of the game. This can only come with bc/fc. Until that happens the cycle will continue, where console owners start from nothing, wait ages for the games to finally come, and by the time they come their console hardware sucks anyways. Yay. Think about it with some of the games you guys are so patiently waiting for, say like GT. There's many GT fans here right? Notice how GT is still being updated for PS3 but you will have to wait ages to get it on PS4. They have to do that, there's no choice, they have to wait for the PS4 audience to build. Now think about how archaic PS4 hardware will be by the time you finally get to play the new GT game. That's the current console model that you guys are living with. It's quite frankly, broken.
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