I'm sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but as a noobie I assume I'm entitled to one wasteful post. (apologies for my possible brazenness) What goes into choosing a console to release for/going multi-platform? Is it a money thing? Contractual agreements? I've always been curious because conventional wisdom suggests you get more by distributing the most, but I don't know what kind of expenses/man hours goes into making multi-platform releases possible. I'd very much appreciate the insight since this particular aspect of downloadable games has always left me confused. Thanks in advance.
That's a big question with no single answer that covers the whole story. I won't go in to any reasons specific to our game as a public forum wouldn't be the proper format for a discussion of that nature. As I've mentioned in previous posts my job doesn't have any direct influence on the business side of the company. The most simple answer is that it is always a money thing. Either you're making a game for fun and don't care if you make any profit, or it's a business and the choices made are all about maximizing potential profit. Lets go over some of the more specific situations: Money! Some companies get exclusive deals to only release a game on a specific platform. This could be in the form of large sums of money that the platform owner pays to the developer to either get a timed exclusive (usually around 6 months) or get part / whole ownership of the game's IP (the game's name, characters, and world). The console maker may consider this if they think it's a big enough title to boost the sales of their own hardware and thus own software over their competitors. A developer or publisher may do this if the money offered will offset the possible sales of going multi platform. Technology! Some games can really only be done on specific platforms, there's simply no choice. Usually this is due to specific physical features of a platform (storage space, cameras, motion controllers, graphical or processing power, etc.). Sometimes this is because the game engine created to run the game was made only for a specific platform and it's considered too expensive to make the it run on multiple platforms. Insomniac's games are an example of this, they've been big Playstation supporters for a long time and all of their game engine technology was specifically built around how the Playstation consoles function internally. With the Playstation 3 lagging behind the Xbox 360 in terms of sales (instead of completely dominating like the PS2 vs Xbox) it probably made financial sense for them to start releasing games on both platforms. Politics! To develop on the PC, you just need a PC and some software anyone can buy. To develop for a console system from Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony, you need their dev kit; special development hardware and software. To get a dev kit you need to be able to get permission from the company to rent the hardware and get access to the software for tens of thousands of dollars. To get permission you basically need a game proposal that the console company likes, or a big publisher (who already has dev kits) likes. Sometimes there's a political game the big companies play were they won't give you access to the dev kits on the grounds that they don't like your game proposal, but may actually be because they know you're talking to someone else or they already have a similar game and don't want competition. Demographic! Sometimes it simply doesn't make sense to release a certain game on different consoles. For the most part a game made for a young child will be sold on Nintendo hardware, it's an unfortunate stigma for Nintendo but it also means the average parent is probably going to buy a Wii for their little Billy or Lilly. "Mr. Sparkles and Ms. Rainbows' Happy Unicorn Play Time" has a much greater chance of selling on a Wii than the Playstation 3, so this combined with the above reasons means it's unlikely they'd make back the development cost of making it for the Playstation 3 and the Wii. These days the difference between a Xbox 360 and a Playstation 3 are usually minor enough that developing for both isn't as difficult as it would of been for past consoles. They have roughly similar performance, similar demographics, and nearly identical default controllers (same number of buttons, d pad, two joysticks, analog triggers). There are game engines for sale that are already multi platform, Unreal Engine being one of the most popular and best known. The console makers themselves are generally throwing around far less money for exclusive deals. This means we're seeing much fewer retail exclusives these days than we may have seen in the past when it comes to big games, but downloadable titles tend to be much smaller games or DLC with much smaller budgets.
Thanks for the reply, Ben; more than I could of ever asked for and very informative. One question though,....can we expect "Mr. Sparkles and Ms. Rainbows' Happy Unicorn Play Time" from uber ent sometime in the future? :lol:
Scathis promised us a browser game with pink unicorns about a year ago. It seems he is too late though, somebody else already made it: http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicor ... -game.html
