Metal Gear 4 headed for XB360?

[Sankari]

How about: who cares? Seriously, it's just talk.

Sankari - I didn't know Sony was publishing MGS.

Neither did I.

It was just exaggarated to make a point. This game is like Halo to Xbox fans. Any news of ports to other system will definately get people jump on others throats. I wouldn't want this ported because it would unbalance the console war. Sony needs this title much more than Microsoft.

 

[mckmas8808]

How about: who cares? Seriously, it's just talk.
.

I know it's just talk. And I'm just talking back to you. What's the problem?

 

[almighty]

I supose at the end of the day and at the end of all of the comments and quotes and rumours the only thing that will tell us if there wil be a 360 version is TIME

 

[Sethamin]

Not absolutely true. There's also artistic integrity and a choice of platform based on a desire to maximise your product. You will find some 3rd parties wanting to work exclusively, and if the devs have any clout, they may be able to convince their publisher of that, though undoubtedly there's a lot of pressure to target larger markets only.

"Artistic integrity" only plays a role if you have to target a platform that you feel like you can't realize your vision on. I doubt that'll apply much this gen, at least to 360 and PS3, considering they're very close in terms of power. Certainly more than last gen, at least.

Very true.. You only have to look at devs like Team Ninja who leaped into the Xbox camp in favour of the greater hardware capability as opposed to developing the DOA franchise on the PS2 which they had already done amazing things with when they developed DOA2..

There's always the possibility that MS paid Team Ninja to get them into their camp. They'd never say that as such, but I think the possibility is very high. Of course, to be fair, it's sorta pointless to debate this since no one can ever be proved right.

If money were the only variable to take into account, then all the major 3rd party games out there would be multi-platform. Final Fantasy would be multiplatform because MS would pay them insane amounts of money to release on their machine. Obviously that isn't happening, not because MS isn't offering the cash, but because there are other things to take into account.

My contention is that no 3rd party publisher can afford to ignore the largest install base, not any install base. Xbox and GC last gen both had tiny install bases compared to the PS2, so financially you could get away with passing them over. It's not about unit sales total, but about ROI (return on investment). How much would it cost to port it, versus how much return can you expect from that? For example, there were lots of PC releases that went to the Xbox only, simply because the cost to port it was so small. However, if they were console releases only, they'd have been insane to only target Xbox unless they were getting a sweetheart exclusive deal from MS.

I stand by my statement that it is all about install base. Last gen, you could pass over Xbox and GC because PS2 had 5x the install base. Publishers cannot afford to do that this gen. 360 is going to end up with >50 million install base. I still think PS3 will have more eventually, but it'll be close enough that no one will be able to ignore the 360 (except maybe in Japan). My prediction is that every big 3rd party title will end up being multi-platform eventually. There just won't be a dominant enough platform that allows games not to be.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

"Artistic integrity" only plays a role if you have to target a platform that you feel like you can't realize your vision on. I doubt that'll apply much this gen, at least to 360 and PS3, considering they're very close in terms of power. Certainly more than last gen, at least.

I'd say there's a fair bit of wait-and-see there. For example, I can certainly see situations where Cell is used effectively that'd be difficult to port, and instead you'd need a replacement. Plus artistic integrity isn't just about using a platform with unique abilities. It's more about focussing on a platform to use it at, say 90% efficiency, rather than 70% if you go cross platform. It's about targetting Xenos and using MEMEXPORT, maybe not to do something PS3 can't do, but to do something special with XB360, and that level of focus requires huge amounts of work if you want to port it.

I stand by my statement that it is all about install base. Last gen, you could pass over Xbox and GC because PS2 had 5x the install base.

5x the install base of each platform. In total, there's (was) about 100M PS2s and 40M XBs+GCs. That's a 40% larger market if you go multiplatform. How many devs really don't need to care about a potential extra 40% sales, especially if the economics is all they base their decisions on?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

5x the install base of each platform. In total, there's (was) about 100M PS2s and 40M XBs+GCs. That's a 40% larger market if you go multiplatform. How many devs really don't need to care about a potential extra 40% sales, especially if the economics is all they base their decisions on?

Depends on how easy to port the titles where, how many huge million sellers were there in the PS2 family that were third party that werent ported or multiplattform to begin with?

Final Fantasy X (however didn't Square-Enix had ome sort of exclusivity deal with Sony?)
Kingdom Hearts - square
Final Fantasy X-2 - square
Dragon Quest VIII - square
Final Fantasy XII- Square
Tekken 4 - Namco
Pro Evolution Soccer 2 (WE6) (PES4 came to xbox)
Pro Evolution Soccer 3 (WE7)
Dragonball Z: Budokai - BANDAI
Ace Combat 2 - BANDAI
Devil May Cry - Capcom
Kingdom Hearts II - Square
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X - Capcom
Dragonball Z: Budokai 3 - BANDAI
Soul Calibur 2 -
Devil May Cry 2 - capcom
Dragon Quest V Remake - S-E
DMC 3 - Capcom
Ace Combat 5 Namco
Resident Evil Outbreak Capcom
Tekken 5 - namco
Dragonball Z: Budokai Tenki - BANDAI
Metal Gear Solid 3- capcom

Taken from vgcharts.org
---

Thats 23 titles that were millionselling and not ported to the Xbox or the GC, out of a total 169 game titles that were million selling (including first\second party). If we remove the number of SONY published games on that list (23) we got 23 titles out of 146 that were not ported.

So only 15,7 % of the million selling third party titles were not ported, most of theese games are very Japan friendly games, that would probably not do so good in the west. 84,3% of all million selling third party games were multiplatform.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Ostepop, what about games like Jak and Daxter, Rachet and Clank, Spyro and so on? As far as I know those were PS2 exclusive multi-million sellers too...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

And if we're at it... Let's assume MGS4 is released on X360. So what? The sky will fall? No-one's gonna buy a PS3 ever again?
Eh...

 

[scooby_dooby]

I know it's just talk. And I'm just talking back to you. What's the problem?

You're trying to tell people what they should and shouldn't talk about, I think that would be the problem.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Ostepop, what about games like Jak and Daxter, Rachet and Clank, Spyro and so on? As far as I know those were PS2 exclusive multi-million sellers too...

Jak and Daxter, rachet and clank and spyro and so on are published by SONY, thus its either a 2nd or first party developer. And if you read my post again, we are talking about third party titles.

 

[Sankari]

And if we're at it... Let's assume MGS4 is released on X360. So what? The sky will fall? No-one's gonna buy a PS3 ever again?
Eh...

Don't you agree with me that Sony needs this title more than Microsoft? I rather have this title Sony exclusive, not because I would prefer it to be on PS3, but because Sony needs this title to move units. Microsoft already has plenty of games in they side that will move systems, not saying Sony doesn't have them but MGS4 is one of those titles that make people go out and buy the damn system.

Without these big exclusives, Sony will be bleeding to death very very soon.

 

[3roxor]

Don't you agree with me that Sony needs this title more than Microsoft? I rather have this title Sony exclusive, not because I would prefer it to be on PS3, but because Sony needs this title to move units. Microsoft already has plenty of games in they side that will move systems, not saying Sony doesn't have them but MGS4 is one of those titles that make people go out and buy the damn system.

Without these big exclusives, Sony will be bleeding to death very very soon.

Is that so? just because we've seen more future 360 games (naturally..) doesn't mean it won't be the same (or better..) for the PS3. Besides, it seems (just like last gen) that Sony is focussing more on creating their own series. I'm sure we will see many interesting PS3 surprises.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

There aren't many people who'd only buy a PS3 for MGS4 IMHO, the fans of that franchise will get one anyway.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Depends on how easy to port the titles where, how many huge million sellers were there in the PS2 family that were third party that werent ported or multiplattform to begin with?

What does that matter? 40% is 40%, whether it's 40% of a 4 million PS2 sales base, or 40% of a 100,000 units of a game that didn't do well. For porting costs, much of a game's costs are in the assets. Developing a new engine (when not using a third-party cross-platform engine, which you'd probably seriously consider if you intended to release to all platforms) is more a matter of time than cost, relative to most of the work and the much larger userbase of cross-platform titles. And that's for a port. If economics and making the most money were all devs cared about, they'd be multiplatform from the off. 40% is a lot, and if money is all you care about, you wouldn't turn your nose up at it. It's because of other factors that choice is made not to go multiplatform and make the most money possible with the best ROI.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Well, it does matter because

a: a game that flopped on one plattform probably isnt going to do amazing in the sales department for another plattform
b: at some point you got to cut your losses.
c: im not going to write up a statistic based on all third party titles that have been released for the PS2, coutning every single jpn only release.

From what i got from Vgcharts, only 15,7% of all third party million sellers where ported. The majority of the titles, were very big titles mostly in japan (thus porting it to another plattform isnt going to generate alot of sales) others had exclusivity deals.

I know that you are trying to hint that some developers dont do it for the money, but thats simply not true, its not how the real world works, if the developers thought they could make money of the title on another plattform, they would port it (as long as they arent under any legal contract not to do so).

 

[Crayon]

I think what he's trying to hint at is that there may be a reason for a developer choosing for a title to be exclusive. One besides "they are foolish". Or "Nawmacido* must be shelling out big money for the exclusive". Perhaps there are GOOD reasons and perhaps the reasons are good enough to make the game a single-platform release. Perhaps the developer has enough clout to push exclusivity past the bean counters? This would certainly be the case with Kojima and Metal Gear.

Now, stand back.

I'm coining.

*I'm not the only one who is tired of crapping up my prose by typing "Microsoft OR Sony" every time I make a simple example. I do it to avoid stepping on some of the more delicate little toes around here.

So I'm coining the name of the fictional company "Nawmacido" for use in hypothetical situations and examples.

Nefarious Assholes Who Make A Console I Don't Own
Nawmacido.

Example: "If... Uh..."

Okay I can't really think of an example at the moment. But the term is coined now. You can use it or not use it. It doesn't matter to me. The point was just to coin it. And that's what I did.

I have coined.

Thank you.

 

[Barbarian]

Well, we can look at a very similar situation that just recently happened in the PC OEM space.
Dell (a third party) was using exclusively Intel chips for many years because they enjoyed special pricing and other benefits of exclusivity. But then what happened, Intel chips weren't doing so hot for a year or two, Dell got pressured by good sales from IBM and HP and the unthinkable happened, they now sell servers powered by AMD. There were many rumors going around and they denied it many times as well. Many believed hell will freeze over before it ever happens.

 

[infinity4]

i personally reckon if there are games moving from ps3 to 360 there should be games moving from 360 to ps3 like lost planet or deadrising

 

[Capeta]

i personally reckon if there are games moving from ps3 to 360 there should be games moving from 360 to ps3 like lost planet or deadrising

That only makes sense if the install base of PS3 is huge so the games can be profitable within the first few months after release. That's not going to happen for at least a couple of years.

 

[TheChefO]

That only makes sense if the install base of PS3 is huge so the games can be profitable within the first few months after release. That's not going to happen for at least a couple of years.

Perhaps they will make a special edition version of each for ps3 (or Wii?) or just port the sequels when they come about.