President of Gearbox questions Valves lack of PS3 support.

[heruamon]

Procrastinato said:

loves2splooge said:

heruamon said:

First off, here's my official response to Pitchford's continuing war against Valve:

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As for the lack of support for the PS3 by Valve....can somebody explain to me WHY every developer must support all platforms.  Because, then they will need to explain to me why Insomniac isn't developing for the 360...if it is simply a matter of sales, any developer making a FPS exclusive to the PS3 would be absolutely crazy!  The PC and 360 are far superior choices from a sales perspective.  Why do Japanese developers make games exclusive to the PS3, when they would chart well on the 360...as DMC4 and other illustrated?  Valve is in a comfortable position, and they are staffed at a level they are happy with, and they have a nice platform in Steam to sell PC titles.  They are fairly independent, and they are banking, since they can afford to pitch $25 million to promote a game that was already going to sell very well.  I've NO IDEA why another developer would comment on another one's business strategy...it's unprofessional, and smacks of jealously, in light of his past comments.  Pitchford's comments equal an epic FAIL...especially in light of how Borderland is performing on the 360, as compared to the PS3!

I am surprised no one in this thread pointed this out yet. It`s interesting to see the Pitchford bash Valve for ignoring the PS3 when Borderlands sales on the PS3 are atrocious. I don`t know how much 2K Games invested in the PS3 version`s development but you have to wonder if they are going to lose money on the PS3 version if sales don`t improve in the future.

Ports are cheap and easy to make, if you plan for them from the get-go.  We're talking like 10% of the total budget of a HD title here, at most.  That was um... kinda the point of what he was saying.

I would wager that the investment was well worth it, just as any investment Valve would choose to make in PS3 development would be worth it, if they wouldn't lose exclusivity benefits from MS for doing so.  I feel pretty confident that the port cost WAY less than 1/4th (25%) the entire devcost, which would be the parallel with current sales percentages.  So, in that sense, doing a PS3 port, and thus widening their audience, was one of the best decisions they probably made -- the game very likely yielded more revenue per dollar spent than it would have as an exclusive.

 

I'm not a programmer, but I've managed enough large scale projects to know that the cost to port a game isn't cheap, by any stretch of the imagination.  That 10% addition cost isn't jsut something most developers overlook...let's see..on a 12-15 million project, that's over a million $$$...that's cheap?  It's called Return-on-Investment...and if you're get better returns on a 360 game, over a PS3 game...why would you invest in multi-platform again?  Valve is looking at the results from Borderland  and laughing their ass off...the second week of the 360, tops the TOTAL sales of the PS3...WOW!