KingsGambit
Caldari Knights
   |
Posted - 2009.01.23 12:39:00 -
[1]
My friends working at eidos said the PS3 devkits set them back ú15k when they first became available, needed nuclear fusion reactors to provide the power (perhaps a small exaggeration  ) and were so complex to code for they scrapped the ideas for most of the ports they'd originally planned. Ultimately, PS3 suffers from a) being too expensive for a console, b) being to complex, expensive and time consuming to develop for and c) not having enough/as many users to justify b) (compared with Wii and 360).
The whole point of a console is to be a cheap/easy way to play video games. You can buy cheap Dells perhaps but certainly not great for gaming. Then you have drivers, DirectX, installation, DRM....and how do you play 2 player when your friend comes round? PS3 doesn't suffer those problems, it *is* a console but well out of the console price bracket. Even the 360 was a bit pricey to start but furious slashing 2 xmases ago brought it to normal console level, but the Wii came in at ú180 in the UK (though you couldn't buy one anywhere for about 15-18 months). So it was cheaper, more affordable and simpler...parents flocked like vultures.
The 360 seems to be the best for popular, big titles in general. Despite that it's based on PowerPC and not X86, it's likely still reasonably easy to port PC games onto (or vice versa these days) and easier to develop for in general. As it came out over a year earlier as well, it already had a user base before the PS3 launch. There are fanboys, the well-off , tech geeks who want blu-ray and white collar execs who probably bought them, but the majority of gamers got the 360 and parents bought the Wii. Ultimately if developers find it too hard and costly to develop for a platform with fewer potential customers, they won't develop for it, and fewer titles will mean less hardware sales and more competitor hardware sales.
 Quote:
"It's difficult to talk about Nintendo, because we don't look at their console as being a competitor. They're a different world, and we operate in our world - that's the kind of way I look at things.
That's just really silly. If I made rollerskates and my competitor made rollerblades, someone wanting wheels on their feet are gonna buy one over the other.
Quote:
"And with the Xbox - again, I can't come up with one word to fit. You need a word that describes something that lacks longevity,"
Short-lived?
-------------
|