It would take really long to answer everything, and that would cut into Mass Effect Time
So I'll just comment on bits and pieces here and there.
archangelmorph said:
If the competing game has more depth & better gameplay then these are a factor of the design & again aren't strictly tied to port quality..
Naturally you need a good game to begin with, I just assumed that part! Lead sku is moot if your game isn't new and compelling in some way. But there's other factors at play right now which really leave no room for just a "very good game". In periods of game drought, a 7.0 rated game may sell very well. Today though even an 9.0 game is not guaranteed to make profit because there's so many 9.5's out there. It may seem like that extra bit of effort dedicated to the lead sku is wasted, but it could just be enough to put you over the edge, to that point where everyone talks about your game and sales go through the roof. That extra bit of polish goes a long way. In fact you'll frequently hear that in game postmortems where one of the developers regrets is that they couldn't put that extra bit of polish in there. The lead sku is more likely to get the polish, the port just has to match the lead sku as best as possible.
one said:
Is it wrong to assume generally a 360 version is already 'good enough'? If you allow me to speak for CFO and bean counters, "if you have human resources available to make an already good 360 version 5% better, better spend the same resources for fixing a PS3 version to make it 50% better, or throw both of em and make 3 Wii games instead!"
It depends on the market. Assume your target release date puts you in the September to December time frame, and assume as well that a typical 360 owner will buy 2 to 3 games in that period. Ok, we need to get that someone to part with $60 for our game. What other $60 options does he have? Right now there's an unusually high number of quality games out there so somehow we have to convince Joe Gamer to give us his $60 instead of giving it to Bioshock, Mass Effect, COD4, etc... The stakes are high as someone just dropped millions to get this game done. If sales miss there's a chance the studio will fold, or the team will be laid off. That's why I always preface my argument on this with "at this time", because with the current market dynamics being what they are it will be very hard to convince someone to sacrifice the 360 sku in any way shape or form. Very hard! Remember as well in a typical company it's really only a handfull of people that ultimately make the decision on which console to lead on, the rest of us with all opinions/biases/etc have zero influence and pretty much just roll with it. If the company is small then the dev leads will have some influence, but more often than not its the people who have shareholder interests in mind who will ultimately decide.
novcze said:
Anyway, I don`t buy rushed crappy ports of XB360 games that performs poorly on PS3 just because developers don`t have enough time or enough experience. I shall buy Burnout for example, because is it good PS3 GAME that runs on 60fps without tearing or framerate drops and i don`t care how xb360 version looks or what can they do with PS3 version if they were exclusive to platform. See that logic? I just buy good GAMES, not crappy ones.
I totally see your logic and I agree! I would do the same in your shoes. Thing is, your $60 doesn't hold as much weight "at the moment" as those 360 owners who are twice in number and who buy twice as much. It's just like stuff I read on some car forums where guys complain when car makers don't make this kind of car or use this kind of engine, or cancel this line, etc. I never post there but if I did I would kindly explain to them that they are largely irrelevant since nowadays it's not what they want that matters but what women want, since they are more and more holding the purchasing power. Comparing that to the console world, at the moment PS3 owners can rightfully complain on forums about bad ports, etc, but unfortunately for them they just don't have the purchasing power to influence things in their way at this time. FYI, I do not think the current situation will last, it's not like the Playstation juggernaut is going to stand still. I suspect most people think long term that 360/PS3 will have similar market shares and attach rates and they will adjust their devlopment strategies accordingly. This is already happening here and there as PS3 coders who are a rare breed are starting to become more common, the 360 to PS3 dev kit count is trundling its way to a closer ratio, etc...
Arwin said:
However, what if they managed to successfully transfer this general approach to the 360. What if these basics and general principles of game engine design translate very well to the 360? They may just as well have said that they designed a next-gen game engine that is well suited to both platforms instead of just the one. They happened to lead on the PS3, but they are very good coders and have done some impressive work on the 360 also.
Have you even seen both games running on both platforms, joker4545? I wouldn't want really to continue this discussion before you have (got the PS3 demo a while ago and a few nights ago also tried the 360 version).
Oh and on the 360, Flatout UC is competition for Burnout Paradise, methinks. I have yet to try that game though to see how it matches up against Burnout.
I've got two PS3's and two 360's, so yeah I tried the demo on both
Bottom line, Criterion pulled it off. I don't think anyone will challenge their excellence as a developer and the brilliant job they pulled off on both games. Now if every studio could do that, we wouldn't be talking right now! Reality check, the experience and skill level from studio to studio is all over the map. We don't all have 20 nAo's on staff, and many companies probably couldn't afford to even if it it was possible. Some studios may poorly budget time, or may be forced to do a port rush job. It's ugly, but it happens. So some studios will simply not have as good results as Criterion. This potential is factored into the "risk assessment" that all companies do when making a product. Criterion, and Infinity Ward for that matter, have proved that they've got the right stuff. So if investors were to give those two companies money to develop a future product they would be more at ease with them and perhaps would be wiling to lead on PS3 if they provided a convicing argument. More often though the studio will have a mixed track record with ports and the people in charge will have to take that and the current market into account when deciding where to lead.
EDIT: Regarding Flatout UC, yeah that is a competitor to burnout. But realistically you wouldn't only think of a competitor as games that are similar to yours. A competitor is any game of any kind on that platform that may take away that $60 from you. So Flatout is a direct competitor, but Bioshock, COD4, etc, are also it's competitors.
Pozer said:
Personally im of the opinion that shipping ported SKU's later is a bad idea. Theres a certain level of hype you only achieve once. Especially these days the kids don't want to seem like they're behind the times or enjoying an experience there friends had 6 months ago.
Yes, you bring up a critical point! Reality check, ports will sometimes slip and miss their deadline. When this happens the results are sometimes brutal. You miss word of mouth momentum. You miss marketing momentum. You may miss a critical time window when you can launch unchallenged by other games and instead end up going up against Bioshock. This is yet another risk that gets factored in when making decisions.
psorcerer said:
To make yourself profitable you need to shine out, not to make games "as everybody else" but make games that stand out, this way you'll get attention.
So the excuse "everybody does that" is a consumer's excuse, not the publisher's one.
I suppose you're programmer and therefore don't have a lot of knowledge about how stuff is sold, am I right?
Yeah I am a coder. I also had my own company in the early 90's and a $250,000 contract (which I negotiated) to make a game demo. Ok, so it wasn't a high tech demo, I had to use WinG because DirectX wasn't yet available
But still, I've dabbled in the world of marketing and sales although yes I am a coder by trade. More importantly though, I've typically worked at small companies where everyone is fairly close, including ceo's, cfo's, etc, and you can just walk in at any time and talk with them about whatever and be privy to information that you would normally never see if you were at say EA. It's fascinating the things you learn when you talk with the bigwigs.
