Now that I have moved into the world of PS3 gaming, I spend a little time every now and again hunting for various gaming nuggets, and reading through worthless message boards (is there a good PS3 board out there?). One thing that really seems to irk the PS3 crowd is the seemingly daily news that another PS3 exclusive game is going the way of 360 (or Wii).
Is this really such a bad thing? I assume it is a necessary *evil* that companies such as Square-Enix cannot exclusively focus on Sony’s consoles. GTA IV not a Sony exclusive? Is that really so bad? Is it really so evil? I chuckle when I see rants complaining about the loss of yet another game from the PS3 camp. Give me a break.
I know that Xbox owners complained that a lot of companies (cough, EA, cough) would build for the PS2 and then port to the Xbox. The porting was not really the problem, but it was the lack of harnessing the power of the Xbox that really upset most Xbox owners. Are we going to see a role reversal between the 360 and the PS3?
It seems reasonable to me that developers would try to come up with code that was cross platform, and then focus in on some specific aspects and advantages of each system. The 360 has great online support with Live (so I have been told), so developers should add in additional multiplayer support. The Wii will have inferior graphics, but has opportunities to build unique controls. PS3 games should incorporate 1080p graphics, Sixaxis support, and take advantage of the extra space of the Blu-ray format.
I have read some publishers state that they want their releases to be the same across all platforms. Why? Wii owners are going to expect a more interactive experience. They should understand that from a technology perspective, the Wii’s graphics will be inferior to the other systems, and the Wii’s media cannot hold as much content as DVD-HD and Blu-ray. In other words, limited extras, and developers may have to make hard decisions to remove some features such as extra levels or maps.
Along the same lines, if a game is released for the PS3 before it is ported to the 360, gamers are going to expect to have improvements over the PS3 release – bug fixes, better controls, Live integration, and so on and so forth. If you are going to take the time to port, why not spend a little extra time and money to make something special?
That last bit (mostly the money part) is probably the rub. I can understand the economic reality of reaching a wider audience by taking a game multiplatform, but I cannot understand why a gaming company would not want to take advantage of special features offered by each console. If developers (and publishers) are going to have to spend the money to hire development teams to port a game to multiple consoles, why not make improvements along the way? From my vantage point, they are already making a financial commitment to port, so carry it a littler further, and I bet we will have a bunch of happy gamers.
All this is easy for me to say because it is reasonable, which means it will probably never happen.
