Soundwave said:
Why isn't it the same as PC? If anything PC is far more complex, there are many, many different variations. A PC can have an Nvidia GPU. Which is completely different from an AMD GPU. It can have an Intel CPU or a different kind of CPU. And there are about 20 different AMD GPUs and 20 different Nvidia GPUs. It can completely different amounts of main RAM and video RAM. On top of that developers not only make games for PC, but also have to make games for the XBox One and PS4 which have different GPUs and completely different memory architectures. And many developers are still also developing the same version of games for XBox 360 and PS3, lol which are a full generation removed and two completely different architectures on top of that. MGSV is for the PS3/360/PS4/XB1 and PC (meaning Nvidia and AMD GPUs). This Nintendo setup is really only two seperate models (the Mario and Luigi NX models are basically the same, hence the brother moniker) using the same CPU/GPU family, same type of RAM, same memory architecture, etc. etc. Not every game needs to be completely reworked either, if a developer is making say a Kirby game, it's not like they need to go overboard with the graphics. They can make the core game for the base model (Mario/Luigi NX) and then simply scale the game up to 1080P with 4X AA for the Bowser NX model. |
It's not the same for dozens of reasons. Certifications for one. The certification process for making a PC game? There is none. There may be a little bit of one if you want to get your game on steam or gog, but that's a mere pittance compared to a console. With a console, each specification would have to certified individually. You're talking tens of thousands of dollars for each submission, and there are many many submissions per spec. You are talking about adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of just getting your game on shelves.
Then there are the control schemes. Do you plan on having every single specification to have the exact same methods of controlling the game, with generally the same layout in terms of look and feel? No. No you do not. one of your versions requires touch controls exclusively, it being a tablet and all. That's a whole control scheme that a team has to spend months of man hours working on, and that's just one spec. Do the other handhelds have touch sceens, but not the "bowser". Guess what? Now you have to spend more months of man hours working on those. And no, it's not as simple as taking a portion of the controls from the tablet and using them on your handhelds. The screens are two different sizes, the finger gestures and sensitivity would have to be adjusted and tweaked even if the underlying system is the same.
Then there's the big one. Optimizations. You keep talking about PCs and how they scale. They "scale" by pretty much not optimizing for anything. As long as your GPU understands your instruction sets you're good to go. This older GPU can't handle the instructions fast enough? Just raise those minimum requirements! Totally different scenario than consoles. Do you want to know the power of optimization? Compare The graphics of Resistance: Fall of Man for PS3 to the graphics of The Last of Us for PS3. Both games run on the exact same specifications, yet the Last of Us looks better than Resistance in every way imaginable. How is that? Because the developers of that game learned all of the tricks to get the most out of limited hardware. Perhaps they how best to optimize the order they send instructions to the CPU and GPU so it runs faster. Maybe they learned about all of the limitations of the PS3's VRAM and know that since it can only store 256 MB that its better to run certain calculations that would typically be performed on the GPU on the CPU instead. All of these things? You cannot do if you're "scaling". The size of that VRAM, and the transfer rate would be different for every spec. Every one! An optimization for one spec could run absolutely terribly on the other. You cannot possibly comprehend how big of a deal this is. This is the core reason why console games look better than they should given the specifications, and you're taking that away from developers.
Then, again, is the cost of dev kits. Do you know how much a typical dev kit costs? Over $1500. Do you know how many people work on typical video game? Over 50. Now you're saying that instead of spending $75000 just on dev kits, you're now talking $300,000. And please don't try to argue that the dev kits would probably cost less because they're similar, you're discounting the tremendous amount of cost of Nintendo creating developers tools that would work across all 4 platforms. That is no small feat.
Those are just the major factors. There's also developing for different screen sizes and different resolutions. There's also modifying 3D models and textures to run optimally for each specifcation. Then there's adjustments for sound. Then there's modifying UIs so that they're easily readible when they're 10 feet away and don't look terrible when they're two feet away. And so on... and so on...
At the end of the day it would probably be more expensive to just develop an NX exclusive than it would be to develop a multiplatform game for PC/PS4 and X1. It is not feasible. It simply is not. Third parties will not touch this with a 10 foot pole.
