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Imperial on 15 May 2008
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HappySqurriel said:

Imperial said:

If the XBOX 360 wasn't arround then all development would have been geared towards the PS3 , The PS2 has a great track record and against 1 competitor ( the Wii) the developers would have been queing up for a guaranteed profit and a reliable platform. Without the 360 the PS3 would most definetley have had MORE sofware.

Your making the assumption that devleopers would see the PS3 in the same light they do now , Most development resources would have been allocated to the development of PS3 games (you keep on forgetting about the PS2's dominance in a market with only one competitor even the least talented of Analysts would have predicted the demise of the Wii, they would have made round about the same number of PS2 games however.)


January 1st 2005, Rockstar just finished production of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas the PS3 is rumored to be released in late in 2006 but there are no solid details; do you begin development of Grand Theft Auto 4 for the PS3 under the assumption that Sony launches it in 2006 and its userbase is a decent size late in 2007, or do you begin work on Grand Theft Auto: Big Easy for the PS2 knowing that its userbase will still be huge?

It is not about "how developers see the PS3" ... the simple fact is there is almost no chance that any developer would have began PS3 projects when they began XBox 360 projects, they would have (most likely) started PS2 projects in their place, and the PS3 would have had a much worse first year library. Why is this so hard to understand?

Like I heard a developer say (maybe it was Kojima ) you can't wait for consoles to have big enough install bases to sell games on them , that's just going to cost you in the long run . Games like GTA 4 have apeal regardless of when they are released , they effectivley create install bases.

 Rockstar would have had a good idea of what hardware would be around now , I'm pretty sure it would be safe assume that they'd start production of GTA IV after they finished San Andreas if they where sure the PS3 would come out with no HD competitors.

In the first year of the PS3's release it would have sold 22 million units ( assuming it sold both it's own and the xbox 360's entire stall base, possibly more if the consumer felt conformted by a unified format)  Why wouldn't this be a good enough reason to develop for the PS3 ?  Granted there would have been those  that wanted to make games for the PS2 to exploit the huge user base but I don't think that would have got in the way of PS3 development . What could rockstar offer with another iteration of GTA on the PS2 ?.

There is also no way of quantifying the effect of there being no XBOX 360 , all we can do is assume . However one thing that can be guaranteed is that the PS3 most definetley would have had more support than it did in this reality , it's possible that the PS2 would have also had support but that doesn't take anything away from the PS3.