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windbane on 17 April 2007
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shams said:
jman8 said:

There's been talk from the developer community stating that the PS3 is difficult to develop for, but only in reference to taking full advantage of the hardware. I'm betting that producing a faithful port from the 360 to the PS3 isn't all that difficult and doesn't require a huge investment. Also, at least one developer has said porting a game from the PS3 to 360 is even simpler than the other way around. Check out this Factor 5 interview:

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2007/04/qa_with_factor_5_chief_julian_eggebrecht.html


I actually think that is pretty obvious. Porting TO the hardest platform would be a lot harder than porting FROM it (depending how crazy your code was). But is this a smart thing to do?

Game A: developed on the PS3, then ported to the 360
- released on the PS3 after 3 years of dev
- ported to the 360 in 6-12 months (so released after 3.5-4 years)

Game B: developed on the 360, then ported to the PS3
- released on the 360 after 2 years of dev
- ported to the PS3 after 1-1.5 year of dev (released after 3-3.5 years)

Your PS3 version ends up being released around the same time - just that, in the 2nd case - its a better game, as it can already incorporate feedback from the 360 release.

The difference is in case 'A' you get no revenue until 3 years - in case 'B' you have revenue (and from a larger install base) after just 2 years.

If I was running a development company, I would always push for the 360 version to come first - and concurrently develop the PS3 version while the 360 one was in development (as it takes longer to make).

 


Yeah, I could make up numbers too but that's all you are doing.  It doesn't take that long to port every time.  GTA IV was a PS3 game but then changed to multi-platform.  Now they will be released the same day.  It's not not they didn't have any PS3 code before they decided to port it to the 360.  Same thing with DMC4.  Moving code to the 360 being easier can be shown by the fact that other capcom games are not being ported over to the PS3.  Oblivion didn't take long to port to the PS3 either.

Anyway, the guys from Factor 5 (creating Lair) said they've already done things on the PS3 that couldn't be done on the 360 so that's promising for sony.  

I think that the 360 and PS3 will keep up with the Wii especially since this fall Halo 3, GTA IV, MGS4, etc will come (I really don't want to list the others but there are a lot between the 2 consoles).  As for PS3 surpassing the 360, I don't think it's that hard considering the 360 doesn't sell in Japan and only sells half as well as the PS2 and PS1 sold in Europe compared to US numbers.  We'll see, though.