Should/Will PS3 devs be compensated for delays?

[expletive]

Well the only thing going through my mind right now is that this is actually good news for a project I'm involved with, as it might end up now being a launch title. This means it'll probably sell better because the buzz around launch with a million or whatever people picking up a console and looking for something to play, is better than it would be if they'd bought their consoles over a period of a few months prior to release...

Of course not everyone is in that situation.

Honestly I've never heard of a console manufacturer compensating developers for a late launch, and typically no-one gives us "guaranteed" install-base figures for how many people might buy our games - we just have to take a risk and hope we back the right horse. Despite these delays, Sony is likely to be one of the safest bets for the coming generation, though certainly Microsoft is gaining ground.

What about developers who were already on target to to reach the 'old' launch date/units shipped ?

 

[MrWibble]

What about developers who were already on target to to reach the 'old' launch date/units shipped ?

They're probably looking at selling just as many copies anyway, as the launch in US and JP isn't affected (ok, day 1 console numbers might be down, but Sony say they're ramping up quicker to compensate) and can look forward to a reasonably good EU launch down the line.

Generally speaking the US and JP versions are easier to do anyway, so a bit of breathing space before the EU versions are needed makes a developers life slightly easier.

I should of course point out that I'm not exactly impartial - I'm largely doing PS3 work, and am counting on that console doing well. Everyone is biased one way or the other so I'm sure you can find some developers who will happily express discontent, if you look hard enough.

 

[wco81]

Publishers will also publicly push for console price cuts, to spur games sales.

Of course, they won't do price cuts of their products, which might have similar effect on games sales.

 

[Crossbar]

Generally speaking the US and JP versions are easier to do anyway, so a bit of breathing space before the EU versions are needed makes a developers life slightly easier.

Are you just thinking about more languages to support or is there more to it?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

For the developers, it's localisation and PAL support. The other problems are the responsibility of the publishers, and these cover local laws, distribution, yadayada. Oh, and there's the case of rating the game and editing content. eg. Germany has more stringent controls on content than the UK, so a build that's okay for the UK may well need content removed for other EU countries. That'll be changes the publishers will find and the developers will need to implement I believe.

 

[MrWibble]

Are you just thinking about more languages to support or is there more to it?

Language support is a big issue, but so is the added problem of supporting PAL. Even though games will run in HD where we can use the same standard world-wide, European games will still need to support standard-def, PAL 50Hz... So that can still cause some headaches, especially as the game will now have to include both 50Hz and 60Hz, due to HD being 60Hz (at least for games - I know 50Hz HD modes are possible, but we're not targeting them AFAIK). Movie files would either need to be stored twice, having been offline-converted or re-rendered (or re-filmed, but I think that might be overkill!), there could still be timing issues as many people still insist on locking timing to frame-rate rather than an independant clock.

For video-games, Europe is a PITA.

 

[Siraris]

There's no way there will be compensation given. What developer could possibly imagine having a huge hit at launch? There has never been a launch where more than ~500k units of any one console were shipped, and the million mark is usually not even reached for months after that. The 360 shipped 330k units to the US at launch and then production shut down for the next 6 MONTHS. Somehow, the 360 is still here. Sony is being forced to delay production from the beginning of September til the end of September.

I think as long as Sony can steadily ship systems between November and March, and launch in the EU with 1.5 million units, everything will be fine. If any publisher is expecting to launch with a console and sell a million copies of a game, they need to get their heads examined.