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ChichiriMuyo said:
Wow, Squilliam, were you making a joke? MS hasn't put support into JRPGs so much as bought a bunch of exclusives So they give money to developers and then the developers run down to the local shop and buy a bunch of candy? No they actually use it to make games... who would have thought huh?
. Also, can you really say that they are driving prices down when they've had a single price drop in three years that amounted to a $50 savings? Plus, there's absolutely nothing to prove anything MS has done, bar money-hatting, has actually increased the number of games on the market. If there was only Microsoft OR Sony the price of that console would be $50-100 higher than it is now, competition baby.
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The 360, thus far, has been stupidly easy to dev for. So easy in fact that one coder and one artist can make a 360 game from start to finish by themselves. 360 has been welcomed by many because it has taken some of the risk out of game development at a time when it was very much needed. It's helped our ability to meat a deadline with a quality product. You can get a good game out on 360 in a 10-18 month timeline, even if you are starting from scratch. You get great tools, great support. Microsoft kisses developer ass because they understand the value of game programmers to their bottom line.
Now enter the PS3. It's going back to the old days of screw you developers, we don't care if it's a pain to work with. Yup, it's complicated. Yup, theres little support. Yup, it will take you years to get it to do what 360 can do out of the box. Too bad, that's how it is, now get to work. In the above scenario where do you think coders will flock to? If all this extra risk/work yielded a tangible benefit then sure, the end justifies the means. The problem is that so far it's only yielding at best parity. Look back at posts about a year or so ago and you'll read how people were expecting PS3 games to be many times better than 360 games by Xmas '07. Needless to say, that hasn't happened. In fact, many games are still having difficultly hitting parity."
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Maybe this is just in the USA, but I'm noticing many trends here. The obvious are previously mentioned things like skyrocketing budgets. Less obvious are constantly missed deadlines and their consequences. Not noticed by many is whats happening internally at many studios. I'm seeing more and more juniors, less and less veterans. I'm seeing people who've been coding games for 10 years burn out and exit the industry totally. I'm hearing grumblings of people tired of having to sleep at work or not see their spouse for weeks on end just to meet a milestone. I'm seeing people devote their lives to ship a game on both platforms by crunching 12-16 hours days for weeks on end, only to all get laid off right after the project ships.
To a certain extent, this has always happened in the industry. But it now seems to be getting more frequent. People exiting the business is becoming as frequent as people entering it. Expectations are becoming unrealistic. Quality of life is severely down. In some ways his blog to me was a way to say that overly complex platforms are not welcome anymore, when it's clear that things can be done in a simpler manner with a similar result. 360 was a step in the right direction to me not because it was done by Microsoft, but because it helped the industry from a quality of life perspective. For perhaps the first time ever, the developper got great tools and support from day one. PS3 to me is trying to pull things back in the other direction where the developer is basically cattle and expected to sacrifice himself to the mighty mother ship. That's just antiquated to me now.
I recall an event that happened in the last crunch where we were trying solve an issue on PS3 and one of the coders I was with told me he had missed his daughters first words because he was crunching. Sounds silly and mellow dramatic, but that kind of thing just gets one thinking. At the time, which was actually just before my now ill fated charalatan post, it got me thinking why in the hell should we be struggling like this to get basics working when this was all so easy on 360? Why do we tolerate this? Well, from the amount of people exiting the industry, it would appear that less and less are.
He may not have intended any of this with his blog, but thats partly how I read it. Help us out, don't treat us like a cog in the machine. Give us a balanced machine, and support us. I like the direction 360 took the industry. I do not like the PS3 pulling us back. It doesn't need to be this way. Worse yet, I can't help but wonder how long it can continue on this way. As the people playing games have aged, so have the people creating them. People want to see their kids and families and will be less and less tolerant of sacrificing them to meet milestone 3b."
Can I say well supported arguments? This guys a developer he works on both PS3/Xbox360 this is an oldie so his comments on PS3 development aren't current, but the points on how Microsoft have improved the lives of developers is.
If they wouldn't have supported their system's development the games would almost certainly still exist, they just might not have made it to the 360.
Really, not even one of your arguments really holds water. Yours isn't anymore - I like how spread apart your post is, liked i've blown it away? Ya! 
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