| Sal.Paradise said:
I don't think they're paying for voice chat on a dev-by-dev basis, otherwise all those indie games made by teams of two people on PSN/Live would not have that functionality. But you're right we're just speculating. All we know is the present situation; Nintendo handle it differently, it is standard and OS level on other systems, and now that one game on Wii U straight up won't have it. I'm just drawing what I see is the most likely conclusion. I suspect Nintendo may make it a standard tool in future, just as PSN/Trophies/XMB functionality etc were all in flux and hastily revised on the PS3. I remember Insomniac's reason that their first R&C game never got a trophy patch after release was because they had to code some crazy workarounds to get the game functional with PSN features (just PSN messaging being accessible in-game or something) and that going back in to tinker with the code might just flat out break it, whereas later on all that functiionality was standard and available for every game without having to code something on your own. I think this is the same sort of situation. |
Makes perfect sense to me. It may be that devs can't use it because it would cost them internally. It may be that Miiverse chat already exists, so why re-invent the wheel, it may be that they will offer it as a service in the future. But even if they didn't, I wouldn't blame them.
However, I would agree that what Microsoft is offering is more appealing, but that is MS' business decision, with their considered constraints.
If Nintendo wanted to offer it as a service to devs, I agree that it would be more convenient for devs in the end. So I agree that Nintendo's solution isn't as open as people seem to be spinning it. Rather on the contrary maybe MS' is more open, in that devs have the choice to either piggyback on MS' infrastructure, or use their own 3rd party infrastructure if they see fit.
This was interesting.
