| richardhutnik said: Look up the concept of "Tragedy of the commons". When there is a common area everyone is involved with, and no one owns or collectively overseas, the end result is that are area (a commons) will end up going downhill and being horrible. It is what happened with the Atari 2600. And with the 3DO, the hardware research costs ended up not being covered, or offloaded on the manufacturer, without them getting licensing kickbacks on the software for it. The lack of quality control does happen. |
I don't know how, but there is a solution out there. I don't have the know how to say what that solution is, but it's there.
| richardhutnik said: * As Nintendo showed, without oversight by hardware makers, the software quality can suffer. The PC industry evolved standards, but you have issue with even the PC as a viable platform, due to it not being easy. This is due to a mix of accessory makers, and equipment manufacturers, who do things their own way. They do it to get competitive advantage. When you force a universal standard on everyone, it leads to commoditization. Commoditization is a race to the bottom for individuals in an industry, because you compete on price. It isn't a way to win. It is a reason why you had Nintendo do a Blue Ocean Strategy with the Wii, to redefine the industry, and make a lot of money. |
Which is why only the necessary parts should be mapped out for the console. Then the hardware manufacturers can equip it with whatever they want afterwards. I don't know if that's enough, but it's what I have right now.
| richardhutnik said: * It is human nature to not want to work with others. Unless there is a strong compelling reason to cooperate, companies won't, particularly when they compete over the same standards. They want to have standards map to their competencies. In the case of standardization, you will force to have a company to compromise and not map to their strengths. The end result is it doesn't happen. A company like Nintendo is NOT going to throw out its values it had evolved over 100 years to say thei idea is to put smiles on the faces of people, to one like Sony, where the idea is to innovate hardware, and be leading edge. |
They all have one goal in common though, and that is to make money. They just have different ways of doing that, and moving more focus to software can help offset what might be lost due to the hardware situation.
| richardhutnik said: * Universal platform to code to is less and less relevant now. For large budget titles, where the goal is to do AAA production values, the costs are so high, companies work their way around the issues to get the games to work and look nearly identical. Capcom, for example, has a dev environment they create for one, and it spits out content that works on whatever the dev environment is set up for. Lost Planets 2 was created in that environemtn. The financial stakes are so high now, the barriers to success aren't the incompatibility in platforms, but how well the game is marketed, how well the game plays, the word of mouth, and also the appeal of the concept (if a new IP). To get an extra marketing push to, developers need to form partnerships with console makers. |
And Lost Planet 2 is a good example of how working with several platforms this way can give one group of customers a lesser product. The PS3 version of LP2 has a pretty variable framerate and has no anti-aliasing, where the 360 version has a near stable framerate with 2xMSAA, though with some frame tearing as well. Not all dev environments are this skewed to one platform of course, but it's still an issue.
| richardhutnik said:
In the area of charities, cooperation goes with that. But, in business, it is to make money, and fight for control of markets. Sony and Microsoft are doing videogames now, to block each other from dominance that fits their bottom line. It isn't charity, it is war. End result, you aren't getting cooperation you would desire, that somehow you have multiple makers of hardware that do innovate, but a common platform to code to. It isn't going to happen, unless everything collapses, and the likes of Linux rises, and becomes a platform for coding games to. |
Well, then there isn't much to do, now is there? 
