By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
jarrod on 13 February 2011
Edit Thread
Degausser said:
jarrod said:
Degausser said:

 Also my take on third party support is that 3DS will get alot of the Japanese guys behind the device (Who'll put stuff on the NGP too) however the western publishers (Outside of Ubisoft) will just neglect the device pretty much like they did the DS. The NGP fits very well with what EA / Activision do nowadays, in terms of specs and demographic.


This is pretty much what I expect.  Japan's going to move wholesale to 3DS, while the west ports all their HD stuff to NGP.  And honestly, I think there's a decent market there for both.

 I think EA / Activision won't go on port overload to begin with, there'll be a unique Call of Duty, Need for Speed, GTA etc and I guess the sales of those will dictate what sort of support they give from there on. I don't expect Japan to go 'wholesale' to the 3DS either given the PSP's success in the country but I'd look at that on a publisher by publisher basis. 

 The wildcard for Sony is whether they can get studios like Epic, iD, Valve etc behind the device. They typically shied away from handhelds as they're tech based companies, but the NGP looks like it plays well into their interests this time. 

There's never going to be an exclusive COD, NFS, etc, on NGP.  From what developers are telling us, Sony's even selling the system to them as a handheld that can run their PS3 engines... the only way it's going to get any exclusives, rather than ports, of the big western IPs is if Sony bankrolls them directly.  It just doesn't make financial sense for western 3rd parties otherwise, when they're looking at a more limited market than 360/PS3 for the same level of cost.  For COD I could maybe see something like a "Modern Warfare Collection" for launch, essentially an "exclusive" repackaging (that could even be farmed out), but it's not going to get something like an AAA exclusive COD effort.

As far as Japan, PSP's riding on a high right now, but the platform's dead elsewhere.  Games like MGS or KH, games that should easily clear 3-4m worldwide are looking at sales likely half to a third of that... when you combine PSP's western failure with NGP's explosive budget increase, you're looking at a relatively risky platform.  From a Japanese perspective, it's also a platform that more or less hinges entirely on what Capcom decides to do with Monster Hunter, which has to be a bit of a worrying position for any 3rd party deciding now where to invest development for the next few years.  3DS by comparison is a more lateral shift in terms of resources (companies can just bring their PS2/PSP engines over directly, and expect similar budgets going forward), plus Nintendo's now taking a more active role in courting 3rd party content early on... I mean we're already seeing developers and publishers that previously looked to be favoring PSP (SE Osaka, KojiPro, NIS, imageepoch, Namco, Capcom, etc) moving pretty strongly into 3DS.  Honestly, I expect 3DS to get even better Japanese support than DS did, and at a much quicker pace.  It already has really, there's not going to be all that much space left for NGP, and even in Japan I think you'll see a lot of developers simply porting 360/PS3 stuff.

As far as the others you mentioned, Epic's already on board in a big way (UE3 seems pretty central to Sony's NGP strategy) and I could easily see Valve or id join in too.  Epic and id have been big iOS evangelists though, I don't really see NGP support as too big a shift for either since they've been getting into handsets for awhile, it's more a natural inclusion for their multiplatform support.  Valve could be big though, but Valve tends to be a more cautious developer (look how long it took them to start really investing in PS3).