amirnetz said:
A couple of points of consideration here:
First, for most western 3rd parties, the relevant gap between the 360 and the PS3 is really 27M to 17M.
The reason: for most 3rd parties Japan does not matter. The majority of western games are not released in Japan due to the high translation costs and the traditionally very poor sales. Only the top tier AAA western titles get released in Japan.
Second: The multi-platform release cost is significantly higher than 10%. The only productive way to develop a multi-plat is useing the Unreal Engine. The royalties to Epic for the use of the engine alone are around that cost and this is before taking into account the seperate platform optimizations.
Building optimized software for the PS3 and the 360 requires very different architecture and very high level of experience and skills from the get-go. You need more people, with higher degree of expertise and higher costs. Doing the PS3 port at the end is super-hard, error-prone and costs an arm-and-leg and months off your schedule.
The bottom line: If you are a smaller developer with a limited budget then focusing on a single platform is not such an bad option. In fact, there are around 50 third party titles due to release this year that will skip the PS3 to save these costs. Are they all fools? No. Just doing their math.
|
Interesting, wasn't aware of that many.
