| Non Sequor said: The western publishers make their decisions based primarily on the US market where the PS3 is far behind the 360. Plus you have to consider that it's vastly easier to target PC and 360 than it is to support PC, 360, and PS3. An economic downturn makes it even more likely that a business will have to focus on it's most profitable lines of business. I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss this as an empty threat. Nintendo fans dismissed this sort of thing as an empty threat last generation and look at what happened to the Gamecube. |
The numbers that float around are that making a PS3/360/PC game instead of a 360 game costs between 10% and 20% more at development time. Since the architecture of the 360 is much closer to the PC one, let's assume its 10% if you go PC/360 and 20% if you also include the PS3.
The differential of 10% in development costs must be compared with the extra sales granted by the PS3 version. I can't be bothered extracting the exact data, but a quick look at CoD and GH games' sales seems to indicate that developing a PS3 versions gives you a boost about 60-65%.
Even if each PS3 game sale turns up as less profit - because of higher license costs or higher support costs, say - including the PS3 in multiplats is still a greatly profitable investment.
Maybe this was not the case last gen with the GC, when costs of porting between the three machines were probably percentually higher and the market share of the GC was lower. But I don't see history repeating, here.
