Are Easy Platform Ports A Thing Of The Past?
By William on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 3:00 AM PST In Sony
According to Sony’s Phil Harrison, they definitely are. In the past nearly every popular game ended up being ported around to most of the systems and the PC. With the increase in development costs, this may not longer be the case for the future. The next-generation battle could end up being a test of games, instead of the hardware test that is constantly debated now. The choice developer’s make now deciding which system(s) to go with is harder than it ever was in the past.
Development and support for a format is very important yes, and the story is very different these days to how it was with older formats,†he stated. “In the past you could pay a million dollars for a PS2 game and get a $50,000 Xbox port thrown in. Those days are gone. Developers have to pick their formats much more carefully.
Via MCV
Yes this is true in many ways. However scarce game ports are, we can always expect really poor-quality video games based on movies ported to every electronic gaming device available. Take, for instance, “Pirates of the Caribbean – at world’s end” game. It was ported to Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, and of course the Wii. The graphics are the laughing stock of the video game market, and the gameplay is so awkward on any system. I think they’re going in the right direction, however – each game system needs to have it’s very own game selection. This would allow for the companies to build on the technology of a particular device, rather than make games for “compatibility” – which really *doesn’t* satisfy all the customers at once.