Why is MS selling its best first party studios?

Looking at my friends list for CoD4, before it launched in other regions, was at 300k for the 360 version

 

I am also in the MS leaving gaming to EA conspiracy theory camp. And frankly I don't know the reason of it. Maybe Bill Gates finally realized MS is not the type of company that good at creating content, which is what console makers essentually have to do.

Maybe its related something entirely outside of gaming. For example, maybe MS has made a deal with Camcast or whatever content delivery company, and will have a different way to put "windows" in the consumer setup box in the future, besides the gaming console.

 

R&C sales barely reached 1 million last time around thought? And that was with a userbase of 100million, the only ones dissapointed are people who have been hyping every goddamn thing coming to the PS3 as a killerapp.

Madden x360 outselling all playstation incarnations of the same, combined, is a big advantage. It means that X360 will continue to be lead platform, while the PS3 gets a crappy port, like last year.

 

I cant see why 360 owners get upset when PS3 owners are excited over new games...?

With an extra year of experience, this will be a non-issue. Its just something that people like to get unnecessarily excited about. Its as if some people think that developmental effort is directly proportional to game sales, which is bizarre.

 

No amount of experience will make PS3 development eaiser and faster to extract performance from than 360. You think Microsoft tools have stopped improving, and developers have stopped gaining experience on their platform?

I won't argue about "directly" proportional or even argue what it means (man-hours per copies sold?), but if you think there is no connection at all, you are delusional. IMHO COD4 is a lithmus test for the industry: its PS3 version has received an inordinate attention, and there's a heavy marketing push trying to convince everybody that the two versions are equivalent (while it's becoming increasingly obvious that they aren't) - if this doesn't help sales, publishers will stop throwing that much effort into PS3.

 

Obviously they haven't, but many developers will likely build subsequent games off their own estiablished engines without much cause for concern towards "extracting more power" unless the scope of the new development warrants it.. Teams don't just waste time & resources ripping apart good engines in the hope of extracting that extra 10% when our new title doesn't evewn need it.. Unless this job is done by a dedicated R&D team whom recieve external (from the game development budget) funding of course..

If they haven't already of course.. But for example, i'm pretty sure it's not going to cost infinity ward anything extra to develop CoD5 for the PS3 as it would to do it for the 360 with their engine and code base already established..

 

Sure, but if the game cost, say, twice as much to develop for PS3 since it has such unique tech and required more man-hours, effort and resources, while earning less sales, this is likely
to have ramifications on other development, outside the series and with other teams - particularly when they can just go the "PS3-port" route down the track like we've seen in 2007, which may not be the best thing for PS3-only console owners, but may prove to be the best financial decision.

What a run-on sentence

But COD4 and its comparative sales should be very interesting - I'm not one to guess, since all those PS3 owners who snubbed Lair, R+C and HS have to buy something eventually... but experience shows multiplatform titles sell much, much better on 360, even considering its much larger user base.

 

Yup.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=30564

 

I never said it would be easier than 360 development did I? Did I say MS's tools would disappear off the face of the earth? Please dont put words into my mouth. PS2 was 'harder' to develop for than GC and Xbox, but it didnt stop Capcom or Ubisoft doing good ports to a less powerful machine.

How is PS3 COD 4 different? From what I hear, the detail is better on the PS3 version. I own it, and it plays great. It will sell fine. Anything else is melodrama.

 

Most of the time they will go "PS3 port" route and it will be quite cheap for them.
I don't see big publishers abandoning PS3 anytime soon.

I wouldn't say much much better when normalized by userbase.

 

I don't think you can so easily write off sales of a game like R&C which has hardly been out a month..

At the end of the day you have to consider the fact that Xbox360 has been considerably cheaper for considerably longer than the PS3 has and therefore only after this holiday will we be able to get a clear enough picture of how PS3 sales/software-sales are going to be going forwards..

It may very well be the case that many of the tech enthusiasts who bought PS3 so far have been into it for games/genres not yet on available/represented-well (quality wise), for Blu-ray or for other functions & once more gamers with less modest disposable incomes pick up the cheaper PS3 this holiday we may very well see sales of even these early titles pick up..

Sure it's just a theory but it doesn't make the alternative any more likely considering this holiday could really go either way for the platform..

 

I have to agree with that. IMO, it is the gamers who buy at <$400 who also buy the most games. Sell to the classes live with the masses. Sell to the masses live with the classes.

 

Not abandoning, but rather servicing with inferior ports.

Normalized by userbase is something interesting to forum enthusiasts, not to accountants.

 

My conclusion is right now the small PS3 installbase makes it too expensive to make any improvements to the PS3 version for most developers. Doing things differently at the programming level is already tricky enough. The PS3 will depend largely on exclusive titles to push the boundaries of what is possible on the machine and expand the install base. The combination of those two may then eventually lead to games that have a more significant difference and make better use of the advantages of either system, in the PS3s case particularly the BluRay disc (most prominently I expect we'll eventually see better audio/video, better textures - once devs implement Edge at least - and better multi-language support).

But I see the thread is straying off-topic.

 

I agree to some extent. But even exclusives especially third party exclusives are limited by how much they can invest into developing a PS3 game. Your not going to see continual investment into pushing the boundaries of the possibilities on the PS3 without significant growth of the userbase or the current userbase becoming hungrier for PS3 titles.

 

Call of Duty 4 on Xbox 360 has a better first week than Gears? I know all about the differences in userbases then, but that is still incredible.

 

Reminder: This is a thread about MS and its handling of first party studios and "second" party studios.