Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Are those HDTV or just HD ready, and you'd have to get an additional box?

BTW, those are just the number of HDTV sold, not the per centage of TV in use.

[Icemage]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Are those HDTV or just HD ready, and you'd have to get an additional box?

BTW, those are just the number of HDTV sold, not the per centage of TV in use.

HDTVs, not "HD-ready" CRTs that just downconvert a 720+ signal into 480 resolution, as far as I'm aware.

As for the number in use, while it's true there are a number of households with multiple HDTVs, I doubt there's a good way to measure accurately how many households have more than one HDTV. Figure that there's probably some shrinkage of numbers due to businesses like restaurants, hotels and bars making HDTV purchases for commercial use, but it's undoubtedly a small amount, certainly no more than 1% of the total.

I'd say the numbers are at least close to reality, or at least close enough for discussion.


Icemage

[PhiberOpticks]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

The only thing we know for sure about "deeper development" is that it means higher production costs. As we all should know by now, just because a company dumped a load of money into a product doesn't mean it's going to be great. So you can't assume that this "deeper development" is going to be translated directly into greater AI, larger levels, etc;

I said it allows for deeper development. Not guarantees it.

This is a contradiction in ideas. Bringing more casual gamers to the community, is good for the community. How do you think most people become gamers? They get turned onto it in passing, and then take it to the logical next step - people don't usually start at the top of the mountain. If the market is moving forward, then so does game development. These developing houses are in the game to make money. Yeah, it's an art, but in the end if the art doesn't sell why are they wasting time? That casual gamer dollar helps fund more "hardcore" titles. Just because you don't like the art of a game, doesn't mean it's not art or is killing the hardcore gamer.

It's not a contradiction of ideas at all. Who's to say that game development wouldn't continue if gamer numbers weren't going up? It continue with less fervor. But it would still happen, nonetheless. The casual gamer may help fund hardcore games, but if they didn't come in droves, it wouldn't break the bank.

The Nintendo DS is a GameBoy. It's the first incarnation that doesn't blatantly have the GameBoy named stamped all over it, but it's still a GameBoy. Plays all the games, and is still developed by the GameBoy division at Nintendo. So don't get it twisted, the DS is still a GameBoy.

Speaking of suggestive notions... It's not called a Gameboy. Therefore, it's not a Gameboy. Nintendo even stressed that it was not a Gameboy. Just because it can play Gameboy games doesn't make it a Gameboy. The Wii can play SNES games. Does that make it an SNES? No. My PC has a Gameboy emulator on it. Does that make it a Gameboy? No.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Well the DS is insane fun. So I don't care what the eff it's called. In fact, I used to be an advocater of the PSP over the DS, until I got both.

Now THAT'S Good fun.

And I suppose that's the solution with XB360 and PS3, but being as they're both expensive and have limited games that appeal to me, I don't care much for either.

But the Wii is cheap, and I still don't care much for it outside of Pokemon.

And Resident Evil, which was remade for the Second time..

[Aeni]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Here's my short take as seeing I'm on a break, I can't go into full discussion.

To those that label something simple as an excuse to making half ass content. You have absolutely no fscking clue what you're talking about, which leads me to believe you have no programming experience at all.

Ask anyone in the world that develops digital content on what would they want:

a. Simpler development process which enables a better workflow, but requires creativity and some sweat.

b. Having a lot of power at hand, but complication with the workflow means that you actually spend less time producing quality content and more time trying to work out kinks in a system.

Look, it's a simple equation of business that the more time you spend on a project, the more costly it gets. You want to shorten this time down? You'll have to hire on additional employees. Does this seem feasible? No. You're either looking at a 24mo development cycle which would cost you $10 million or a 12mo development cycle which would cost you $25 million. Either way, I'd rather take an 18mo development cycle that only cost $5 million if I was a project manager.

Why have to deal with this if you can have a simple development format, which focuses primarily on satisfying a simple goal? It's to make entertaining content which would not be tiring after only a few minutes.

Great graphics isn't everything. Somewhere down the line, you're going to face an issue most development teams already do and that is, great graphics also cost an assload of money, as do great sound, etc. Unless you are guaranteed success, then you're not going to pony up $50 million for something as fickle and fleeting as a video game. Many developers have done so already and found that the pill they had to swallow was far bitter than they anticipated. Any wonder why they resort to making cash cows out of cookie cutter titles? They're just trying to stay alive right now, as all the risk taking in the past incarnations of the PlayStation w/o success has left them jaded and tired of fooling around with "the next great thing."

[PhiberOpticks]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

To those that label something simple as an excuse to making half ass content. You have absolutely no fscking clue what you're talking about, which leads me to believe you have no programming experience at all.

I don't know. Nintendo's had their dog in the hunt for a very long time.

[Icemage]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Here's my short take as seeing I'm on a break, I can't go into full discussion.

To those that label something simple as an excuse to making half ass content. You have absolutely no fscking clue what you're talking about, which leads me to believe you have no programming experience at all.

Ask anyone in the world that develops digital content on what would they want:
a. Simpler development process which enables a better workflow, but requires creativity and some sweat.
b. Having a lot of power at hand, but complication with the workflow means that you actually spend less time producing quality content and more time trying to work out kinks in a system.

Sorry, speaking as someone who has not only done programming, but game programming in the past, your assumptions aren't accurate.

The decision of what to do with game design isn't predicated just on cost; it's predicated on return on investment. Most of the game developers out there know they're not going to be able to take as many chances with the new consoles as have recently, because the new platforms just don't have the sort of market presence necessary to support anything but huge blockbuster titles.

If there were 100 million Xbox 360s out there instead of 10 million, you could take it to the bank that every developer would be working on 360 games. As it stands now, a lot of games we're seeing are ports because each platform just doesn't have enough install base to fully support smaller titles.

Look, it's a simple equation of business that the more time you spend on a project, the more costly it gets. You want to shorten this time down? You'll have to hire on additional employees. Does this seem feasible? No. You're either looking at a 24mo development cycle which would cost you $10 million or a 12mo development cycle which would cost you $25 million. Either way, I'd rather take an 18mo development cycle that only cost $5 million if I was a project manager.
Why have to deal with this if you can have a simple development format, which focuses primarily on satisfying a simple goal? It's to make entertaining content which would not be tiring after only a few minutes.

Mmm... no. The assumption about higher resolutions taking more time is only accurate in some genres, and the difference in effort is not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

There's not a ton of difference in time expenditure when you're working with 2048x2048 textures versus 1024x1024. You still have to do some gruntwork but it's not going to slow up development by 50%. 10-25% would be a more realistic figure depending on what you're doing.

Great graphics isn't everything. Somewhere down the line, you're going to face an issue most development teams already do and that is, great graphics also cost an assload of money, as do great sound, etc. Unless you are guaranteed success, then you're not going to pony up $50 million for something as fickle and fleeting as a video game. Many developers have done so already and found that the pill they had to swallow was far bitter than they anticipated. Any wonder why they resort to making cash cows out of cookie cutter titles? They're just trying to stay alive right now, as all the risk taking in the past incarnations of the PlayStation w/o success has left them jaded and tired of fooling around with "the next great thing."

You're right about great graphics not being everything; not every new game has stellar graphics, nor do they always need it (Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved comes to mind).

The console hardware is just a means to an end. The developers will go wherever there's money to be made. If that means there's more of a market for the Wii, then we'll see more Wii games. If there's more market for the Xbox 360, then we'll see more Xbox 360 games. And if the PS3 comes out on top, then we'll see more games developed for it.

Resource outlay is certainly a consideration, but return on investment is the name of the game.


Icemage

[Aeni]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Sorry, speaking as someone who has not only done programming, but game programming in the past, your assumptions aren't accurate.

The decision of what to do with game design isn't predicated just on cost; it's predicated on return on investment. Most of the game developers out there know they're not going to be able to take as many chances with the new consoles as have recently, because the new platforms just don't have the sort of market presence necessary to support anything but huge blockbuster titles.

What you had stated there ... is in contradiction to what you say here ...

If there were 100 million Xbox 360s out there instead of 10 million, you could take it to the bank that every developer would be working on 360 games. As it stands now, a lot of games we're seeing are ports because each platform just doesn't have enough install base to fully support smaller titles.

It seems that, taking the second statement, you are agreeing with me. The cost to develop a new project entirely from scratch are very heavy indeed since the install base for all three systems are broken roughly evenly (I use this word very loosely, but I'm comparing this to how the console marketshare was with just the previous generation) Everything points to risk and cost. You may be a programmer, but you're not in the management seat that has to ink deals with the major publishing companies (aka The Bank) and therefore might not know all there is to know about the heavy financial responsibilities that each development ensues.

Basically, it all distills down to this. If you were someone in position to look at the costs of developing a new title, you're not only having to look at marketshare (which is currently fragmented) but you're also going to need to look at your timetables. Your publishing partner has other studios developing titles as well and they are going to shuffle the schedule to best fit what will get the prime release dates. All of these points to not only how much copies a title will move, but what it cost to produce. As you know, generally, all software titles are priced similarly in the video game market ($39.99-$49.99) It doesn't matter if it's a 140+ hour RPG or if it's some Tetris rehash. At release day, they are priced similarly. Does this accurately reflect the amount of development? No. So it's quite important to reduce your overhead while also making sure you're hard at work developing what the people want, not some potential bomb.

[Icemage]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Basically, it all distills down to this. If you were someone in position to look at the costs of developing a new title, you're not only having to look at marketshare (which is currently fragmented) but you're also going to need to look at your timetables. Your publishing partner has other studios developing titles as well and they are going to shuffle the schedule to best fit what will get the prime release dates. All of these points to not only how much copies a title will move, but what it cost to produce. As you know, generally, all software titles are priced similarly in the video game market ($39.99-$49.99) It doesn't matter if it's a 140+ hour RPG or if it's some Tetris rehash. At release day, they are priced similarly. Does this accurately reflect the amount of development? No. So it's quite important to reduce your overhead while also making sure you're hard at work developing what the people want, not some potential bomb.

Mmm... not all titles are priced the same. Some titles release to a much lower cost... an extreme example is Mercury Meltdown Revolution for the Wii, which basically a near-direct port of the PSP game with some waggle tossed in, for the budget price of $19.99.

Realistically though, if you put yourself in the shoes of a developer/publisher today, you see:

~10 million Xbox 360
~10 million Wii
~5 million PS3
~100 million PS2
~25 million Xbox
~25 million GameCube

Microsoft and Nintendo have discontinued software and hardware support for their last-gen consoles, but Sony still supports titles on the PS2 (which coincidentally has 10 times the market penetration of any other available console).

The trick is difficulty of porting software. If a software title is exclusive to a console, that locks in the potential audience to owners of that console, and limits sales in the current fragmented market.

Porting from 360 to PS3 is tricky, and as we've seen, is somewhat difficult to do without losing something in the process (Virtua Tennis 3, Fight Night Round 3, etc.)

Porting from PS3 to 360 is a bit less tricky, but we also have evidence that something tends to get lost in the transition (Unreal Tournament 3, Haze, etc.)

Porting from either of the HD consoles to the Wii is almost not worth the effort. The control scheme is so different, the hardware is so much less capable, that you basically have to reformulate the game to run on the Wii hardware or dumb down the engine heavily (Geometry Wars: Galaxies, Call of Duty 3, Samurai Warriors: Katana, etc.).

Porting from the Wii to either of the HD consoles isn't difficult, as long as the title in question doesn't make some weird use of the motion control or pointing mechanics (a port of Mercury Meltdown Revolution to the PS3 would probably work, for example). Of course, it makes little sense to do so since you'd also have to slap another dash of paint on the games, so this only really works with a handful of genres such as puzzle games.

So developers have a number of choices. The first choice is exclusivity, the second choice is order of development.

If a title is exclusive, then the logistics are easy, but the market is limited to whatever fraction of the audience owns the console.

If a title is multiplatform, then the developers have to decide what platform to focus on during development, or do simultaneous development.

Simultaneous development takes significantly more manpower and complicates development in the short term, but allows for simultaneous release across each platform. A lot of games are doing this right now, hedging their bets to make sure everything works properly at the cost of some developmental resources. Madden '08 is a good example of this.

Focused development means that the game is designed to run on one platform, and then gets retroactively ported to others as needed. Haze is a good example of this, focusing on the PS3 version at the cost of the Xbox 360 version.

This is what I'm talking about when I talk about return on investment; the added overhead of doing ported versions or simultaneous development still does not outweigh the increase in market coverage.


Icemage

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Future Estimates, Xbox360 shipping with HD-DVD

Hmm. Cost of development is an issue; no matter how good the potential return may be, a mammoth cost will stop many developers from moving forward--or, tone down the ambitious goals, at least. Of course, unless the costs is trivial, no sane manager would OK a project with no prospect of returns.

Both cost and return are considerations and constraints.

Of course, the game industry has almost as many risk takers as sound, conservative business types. Sometimes, they are even one and the same. I know I'd never be able to sleep at night if I give a game like Spore the go ahead, knowing the R&D cost cannot be estimated with any certainly. Yet, EA is making it under Maxis; the very same "play it the safe, revenue secured way" EA which gives us the zillion <sport game franchise> <year> titles.

* * *

The "down conversion" of taking a game from one platform to a less capable platform is not all that uncommon; I'm sure most of us can name more than a handful of arcade games and even console games which were given this treatment.

How costly this process is depend heavily on development planning and architecture of the software.