Rumour : Insomniac going multiplateform

[heruamon]

Reasonable said:

Squilliam said:
Going multiplatform would probably kill their MO of releasing a game every year given the increased development effort and possibility for one or both consoles slowing them down. Furthermore they probably haven't got a clue as to how to reap a high performing engine out of the Xbox 360 as they have never touched the architecture. It'd take too much time to get up to speed and I relate this back to the first point that it would kill their ability to release a game a year.

That's a good point.  It's easy to forget their basic approach is different from most developers getting a game out every 2 to 3 years.  They release one a year like clockwork, which is clearly going to be easier working with one engine tuned to one platform.

It's also interesting to note their total sales since releasing Resistance 1 are 8.25 million units.  While, Resistance 1 apart, their titles seem to be selling approx 1.5 to 1.7 million each, the costs of their titles releasing 1 a year has got to be much less that the 2 to 3 years spent on most big titles.  8.25 million units isn't too shabby since Resistance was released in November 2006.

I suspect many who look at each title individually think their performance sucks, but that's basically over 8 million units (plus an unknown number of PSN downloads as well for Booty) in just over 3 years - and the latest ratchet game looks set to sell plenty more units as it's early in its lifecycle next to the previous one.

 

Some quick estimates put the developer's revenue at around $170 million for those units shipped, sso it's a matter of how large the teams were, and what the development cost were.  I think it's safe to say that they are comfortable, and they are making good money.  They are one of the most experience developers on the PS3, so I don't see why they would go multiplatform a this point in the console cycle.