What If The NX Console Is Portable Too?

[potato_hamster]

Miyamotoo said:

potato_hamster said:

Hey whatever man, you don't have to believe me. That's not going to take my name out of the credits.

Of course every platform isn't redone from scratch. In fact I've said quite the opposite, that I'd say between PS3 and Xbox 360 the codebase was about 80% shared, and with the PS4 and X1 even more is shared since they are so similar. However, it still remains that for each platform you need to make non-trivial, non-significant modifications to the code base, engine, 3D models, animations, AI etc to optimize those for a platform. Depending on how well the engine is optimized (which is probably the least trivial part of game development) it can be easier, but you still have to make platform-specific revisions. And yes, you're certainly right that as you make more games, especially using the same engines, those platform based engine adjustments lead to less and less work, as you definitely don't need to reinvent the wheel, but my original point remains:

No matter how you slice it, there's no way on earth you make one game, for say the NX home, and Nintendo provides an API that makes that game automatically work perfectly on the NX handheld, or vice-versa. It simply isn't going to work that way. Every different version of the NX is going to require extra work, and extra testing. and add extra expense to develop for as a result. Yes, it'll probably be less work to do so than it was to make a game for both PS3 ans X360,  but at the end of the day it will be cheaper and take less time to make one game on PS4 than it will to make that same game to run on all the versions of the NX handheld. That type of additional cost will only be tolerable if the platform sells like gangbusters, and it's going to be very very hard to gain traction when the initial investment is higher compared to other platforms.

OK, NX will probably have handheld and home console that will probably have same type of CPU, same type of GPU, same type of memory, same OS, same or similar API, devs kits and code base, it will basically be one same platform with two devices that only have different power, and you are saying "it'll probably be less work to do so than it was to make a game for both PS3 ans X360"!?

Making one game for NX handheld and home console it will be incomparably require less work than making same game for PS3 and Xbox360, it will be much more similar making same game/app that works on iPad and iPhone.

So basically developers with little extra effort (that is incomparably less than making same game for another platform) will have one game on two console devices, I think that will be very attractive for 3rd party developers.

No one said that wouldnt require extra effort, but that effort will be incomparably smaller than making game for completely different platform or making game for Xbox360/PS3, Vita/3DS or even PS4/XboxOne. Thats the all point.

Probably not the same dev kits. You better hope for third party's sake they each platform doesn't share one dev kit. The cost of such a dev kit would be signifcantly higher than the dev kits of other platforms. And yes, I maintain probably, because I've worked with Nintendo's developer tools and API. They are absolutely abysmal, and I do not have the confidence in Nintendo to make such tools well enough that it would actually be less work than using and working with the tools made for say, the X360 or PS4. So yes, I'll continue with "probably" because Nintendo needs to me prove to me they can actually make a developer friendly dev kit and tools package, much less one that can make developing for separate platforms easier. You might have that confidence but I certainly do not.

How on earth can you decide how much "extra effort" it will be, much less decide that it will be incomparaly smaller? It could be 50% less effort, or 80% less, or it might be 10% less. We can't possibly know that at this point. Making a game for the PS4 and X1 typically requires minor codebase changes, no asset changes, and is more of matter of optimizing the engines for each platform since the platforms are so similar in terms of both architecture and performance, and while this is non-trivial, it is less work than say, porting a PS4 game to the Vita (something I have actually done). These NX platforms, while the arcitecture will undoubtedly be similar if not a "scaled back version of identical architecture" has entirely different obstacles to overcome. These differences in processor speeds, cache sizes, ram sizes, bus speeds etc require additional work to accomodate these restrictions. You might need to redo all kinds of things such as 3D models, animation rigs, animation, AI, textures etc. so that the game will run acceptably on weaker hardware.  Making an iPhone 5s game work on the iPhone 4 also requires a lot of this work. That's why there are many apps out there for iPad that aren't found on iPhone or for iPhone that aren't found on iPad, or for iPhone 6 that won't run on iPhone 4. It's not a "little extra effort", considering you're likely millions of dollars in man hours to see it done.

The effort involved won't be "incomparably smaller". Let's be generous and let's say it'll 50% less effort than supporting an entirely new platform. Sure that's a comparative savings, but consider this. Let's say a developer wants to develop a game. It costs X to make it on PS4, an additional 0.8X to support it on X1 as well since the platforms are so similar. It'll still cost 1.35X to support it on NX (0.9X for NX since the architecture is so fundamentally different, + .45X for NX portable, because you need to support both). So, instead of spending 1.8X to make a game for PS4 and X1, it'll now cost  3.15x. That's almost double the cost of making a PS4/X1 game. Not exactly "very attractive", is it? The sales on that additional platform would have to justify the additional cost, and you're facing an uphill battle since it's more expensive to make an NX game than it is to make a game on any other single platform. I really don't think that is going to fly.