Don't you think Sony First party studios spend too much time & money on ...

[davygee]

Noobie said:

As far as i believe every Sony first party game studio spend considerable time and effort on first developing a game engine and than a game. and most of the time only two or three games and then either the series is droppped or Sony release a new console.

See the list of Engines

-  Infamous developed new engine (only 1 game on it so far)

- GG developed special engine for KZ2 (developed only 1 game on it)

- ND developed engine for Uncharted, (now developing second game on it)

- MM also developed special engine for LBP ( only 1 game on it)

- i think Insomniac also developed special engine for resistance (2 game on it)

- Polyphony i think is developing a new engines for GT5 from scratch..

and many more

the problem i see although few of these engines were necessary but others i feel could be avoided.  the most i fear is that many of these engines will become useless when Sony will launch PS4.

So i think Sony waste too much resources on developing the platform/engines which become obsolete or which have to be discarded every generation. PS2 engines can;t be updated to use PS3 Cell Chip.. similarly i believe PS4 will be a totally different architecture (seeing the last three playstations). so if sony can somehow get a way to make its first party game studios to make fewer and better game engines and spend more resources and time of these game studios to crank out games, than it will definitely help Sony a lot. or better yet Sony can develop an ISA for its platstation chip so that atleast these game engines just need updates or modification, and old engines are not discarded at the end of every console generation.

What are your opinion.?

ps. this is just my opinion based on some observation.. and being a naive abt game devleopment i may be technically totally wrong..

You will probably find although these compnanies (Sucker Punch, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Media Molecule, Guerilla and Polyphony) transfer information and techniques between each other to help other companies get the best out of their engines.

On top of this, all of these games are technically superior than what could be done on a generic engine.

This is Sucker Punch's first PS3 game and of course have spent the time on a new engine, but I reckon they should be able to get another 3-4 games out of this engine easily with a little tweak here and there.

Insomniac have actually made 4 games so far and are working on their 5/6 at the moment, all of which have used variations of their 3d engine.

Naughty Dog took some time to get their engine from scratch, but have now tweaked and enhanced for Uncharted 2 and have one of the best in the industry and by looks alone, should be able to stand up in years to come.

Media Molecule's is a first for them, but no doubt will be used again and again.

Guerilla spent years on everything in their engine, but WILL be used for new Killzone games and other genres.

Polyphony need to develop specific engines for themselves, to make sure they get the best out of the system for a racer at high resolutions, no doubt we will see GT5 and possibly GT6 on this engine.