drago on 28 March 2007
staticneuron said:
Who should the choice lie with? Developers develop for the lowest common denominator. So if there is an SKU without the high def visuals, blu ray, hard disk, and online play then most devs will program so those that do not have will work. Believe or not it makes the add-on's useless why bother get the higher SKU if the "majority of games will not take advantage of it?
As for the high def: If the specs map well if would just a matter of the game changing resolution, texture details, etc. automatically - imagine PC games, only that they come preconfigured. As for Blue-ray: For example 50% of the games could fit on DVD or they could do an alternative version with multiple disks. Hard disk: Could improve your load times, but with a nice drive it would not be mandatory. And it goes on and on. All PC games have managed to do that, so why should it not be possible on a console?
Just a what if, but of course, as it is now, its simpler, yes, but not necessarily better. Just think of online: it does not even make sense for all games (VF 5), some players dont even want/need it, it is not done for all games because of budget, etc. As I said, its a question of value. If you really want all features, then yes you will shell out whatever $ it takes, but if you can live with half of them, it suddenly seems a little bit wasted, especially if you are on a tight budget. So the choice should lie both with developers and customers. The result would be that everyone feels better, because you only pay for what you really want to and the total install base can grow at a much faster rate, because of a lower price entry point.