There's one other thing to consider about the matter; let's say a random developer would want to port its 360 exclusive game to another platform, the extra content required, along with porting costs, would be enough to make Wii remake of the game cheaper/financially wiser.

By the way, for a change i agree with Squilliam.

Dirty tricks ahoi!

So it seems Sony has this thing about games achieving parity and Microsoft has this thing about games not coming on more than one disk.

Result - Xbox360 performance advantages mitigated and PS3 space advantages mitigated and the games are designed/redesigned to fit well within the capabilities of both.

Bah! They are both bad, but I think Sony will end up pissing off more developers than Microsoft with this strategy.

Dizzy... too much spin.

It's not unrealistic to ask for something extra for a port. When Third parties make PS3 games come out later, Sony should make them pay somehow.

Extra modes or improvements give incentive for people to buy a game later, rather than buy it cheap on the 360 if they were the same. It's called making sure that the game doesn't flop for penny-pinching consumers. Cause if the game then flopped, the blame would be on sony, not the porting of an old game to the PS3 with no content.

I don't see what the problem is.

@DMeisterJ: Where's the spin?

The way I see it, Sony shouldn't ask for anything more than a quality port. Other than that they're just putting artificial requirements on developers, or using developers as a weapon against Microsoft without giving them any added benefit.

@DMeister: The thing is, that Sonys current position isn't enough to justify the added content. Sure, it's good for the gamers (if the games even get ported). And think about all the crying everywhere if Nintendo had put a similar requirement.

But how good do "quality ports" sell a year after their months or a year after their 360 counterparts?

When the price has fallen on the 360 version, and you're looking at two exact same games, the 360 version will always win. So is it too much to make the PS3 one special so as that people can make an informed decision about which to choose, so when the sales on the PS3 are much lower than the 360 version, it's not because it came out too little too late.

@DMeisterJ: Shouldn't that be something for developers to worry about, rather than Sony?

Very few customers have both a PS3 and a 360 (see NPD's study on that). The two versions of a PS3/360 game are barely in direct competition with each other.

DMeisterJ said: Dizzy... too much spin. It's not unrealistic to ask for something extra for a port. When Third parties make PS3 games come out later, Sony should make them pay somehow. Extra modes or improvements give incentive for people to buy a game later, rather than buy it cheap on the 360 if they were the same. It's called making sure that the game doesn't flop for penny-pinching consumers. Cause if the game then flopped, the blame would be on sony, not the porting of an old game to the PS3 with no content. I don't see what the problem is.

Are you serious?  "Sony should make them pay somehow?"  Sony has cost third parties millions of dollars in extra development costs due to making a system that is difficult to develop for and fraught with bottle-necks.  At the end of the day, if third parties believe their game is good enough to be bought on the PS3 after other versions have already come out (say for example, the difference between Bioshock and Alone in the Dark), why should Sony force them to incur even MORE costs than they already have due to the console manufacturer's poor strategy?

Overwhelmingly, any extras included on PS3 versions of game's arn't announced until AFTER the Xbox 360 and PC versions are released (in many cases the PS3 version itself isn't announced), so you're incentive announcement falls flat.  It IS Sony's fault that small and mid-sized developers struggle to maintain PS3 development cycles versus the other two platforms, developers and consumers (who lose games when developers cannot afford to produce extras) shouldn't be forced to lose out even more to save Sony's pride.

 

DMeisterJ said: Dizzy... too much spin.

There's your problem.  Only the anti-Sony folks here could turn extra content into a bad thing.

 

DMeisterJ said: But how good do "quality ports" sell a year after their months or a year after their 360 counterparts? When the price has fallen on the 360 version, and you're looking at two exact same games, the 360 version will always win. So is it too much to make the PS3 one special so as that people can make an informed decision about which to choose, so when the sales on the PS3 are much lower than the 360 version, it's not because it came out too little too late.

That argument would only work if an Xbox360 game were a substitute for a PS3 game. For the most part people buy what is available on their one system. Look at NPD, fewer than 5% of people own more than one next gen system so that means that 95% of PS3 owners don't own an Xbox360 do recieve the earlier version/port. Besides this, didn't oblivion sell really well on the PS3 in spite of coming out a year after the Xbox360 version?