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Machiavellian on 19 September 2022
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twintail said:
Machiavellian said:

Its really going to be a budget/money issue. Would you as a developer want to update a game for new hardware or build a new game. It will depend if updating will net sales because development isn't free. The time and resources needed to update a game to a new device many not be worth the amount of time, resources and money it takes to port at least not in the short time frame. Probably the best well received bigger games will see a port as they can pretty much sell it twice but for smaller games not so sure.

I don't think it only comes down to sales. Updating for new hardware can actually be less cost intensive in the long run, since you're giving yourself an opportunity to understand/ use the new hardware in more controlled environment as opposed to learning the new hardware alongside trying to develop a brand new title.

Getting to grips with the hardware with an update could potentially save time, money and headaches over doing the same with a new game. There's also the possibility that a Steam/ Quest version of the game already exists. With PSVR2 being much closer in overall design to other VR devices, there might be less work on the devs side to get certain things working or less time to consider how to make the chances.

There's probably a variety of different situations where it might make less sense to do. But I do agree that the far smaller games might have less chance of being updated. 

Everything is about sales.  Developer time is not free time, they draw a lot of money and the resources they use to do their job is also a cost.  A game company absolutely needs to manage their employees time and working on anything that does not help bring in revenue is a loss leader.  I can see some sort of parallel development depending on priority if a developer can work on porting a game while art, design and other groups are still in the early process of their job but if the devs are not on down time then you go for the money.  Usually studios that cannot properly manage their dev time are the ones to quickly go under or get behind in the game that will make them money they run out of money.  

I agree that their are different stragety models like bundling old and new game, parallel development or even trying to resale old game with new features, graphics etc on the new hardware but sometimes such actions can cause backlash.