Being that it has been more than 5 years since the Xbox 360 launched, new handhelds are being released, and people are talking more and more about the successor to the Wii, I have been thinking a lot about the future of the gaming industry over the last little while. In order to do this I needed to understand what happened in this generation; and (in my opinion) the most important question is “Why did third party publishers never adapt to the success of the Wii?”

From what I have seen, explanations of this fall into two separate but equally incorrect categories. First off, there is the claim that developers are “Artists” and they could never compromise their vision by producing it for a system with lesser processing power; the reason this fall apart is that, as anyone who has worked for a videogame developer can tell you, outside of a few elite studios (and independent developers) the publisher dictates what is produced and their interest in “Artistic vision” is similar to a pimp’s interest in romance. The second explanation is that publishers/developers hate Nintendo and want to see them fail. The reason this falls apart is that publishers/developers did adapt to the success of the Nintendo DS.

The best explanation I have is that publishers accepted that they were going to face higher development costs in this generation long before the Nintendo DS was released, and came to the conclusion that they were going to manage this risk by releasing games to as many platforms as they could. This is why most third party games have been released to the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 even though (at times) they could seem like a very odd fit for the platform. Publishers didn’t support the Wii because it went against their multi-platform approach; because you couldn’t make a good cross-platform game with the Wii without making two separate games that took advantage of the graphical and user interface differences between the systems.

The reason I believe this is important is that I suspect that third party publishers are going to take this approach a step further in the next generation; and the reason many of them are talking about delaying the beginning of the next generation is that they’re waiting for smartphones, tablet-PCs, and net-books to become powerful enough that they can release a game on those devices at the same time as they’re releasing a game to a home console.  I could be wrong but I actually think that an approach like this would be very negative for the industry on the whole.  When you’re making a game for multiple systems at the same time, the design of that game tends to be determined by the lowest common denominator of the systems; and games stop being designed to be the best possible experience for a platform, and end up being the most acceptable experience for all platforms. When you’re dealing with systems that are a lot alike this isn’t much of a problem, but the less similar platforms become the more a game would suffer on one (or more) platforms.

We can get back to the whole "they just hate Nintendo" thing, which i would say is valid for Western Third Parties, who have ignored DS as vigorously as they've ignored Wii, but that would derail this discussion hideously

on topic: I am afraid of that as well. This generation has seemed so bland because you have two consoles whose libraries basically clone one another, and the first parties are the only differentiating factor, this could get all the worse if we expand more onto these platforms where the platform proprietors don't even care about creating first party titles, leading to greater homogenization and boredom, though i do doubt that they're waiting specifically for smartphones to catch up.

I think it has already been made clear that Microsoft and Sony will extend this generation so they can actually make profits (or break even at least in Sony's case) and because the cost of developing games for machines that demand greater developing time to produce does not give the HD bad boys much incentive to move into a new generation. It is all about profit, period.

This is a business and developers are adapting to changes. We no longer live in a world of three consoles and a Nintendo Handheld. There so many platforms now, almost too much, and they see it as an opportunity to make money. 

This has nothing to do with Nintendo which has the most exclusive games anyway. When you have ios, android, wp7, 3DS, PS3, Wii, PSP, 360, DS, I seriously doubt you are going to focus on one platform when you have so many to build on. 

What's going to happen the next couple years is a division a port.

HD : PS3, 360, PC, 

SD: Wii, 3DS, PSP, NGP

Mobile: ios, Android, wp7

The game will be made in HD, ported to Wii, then later added to the mobile. 

They'd only move away from this mindset if it could truly be proved that exclusivity or a reduced number of platforms would lead to higher profits for the company making the games. As of this point in time I cannot really point to any data which implies this is the case for even a substantial minority of games released. Given the fact that games have two substantial costs, marketing and art work, both of which transfer readily between platforms I cannot see them changing their ways.

The upshot is that no game will ever max out the PS4. This is good because I could listen to Sony drone on about potential all day generation long!

theres still money to be made in this gen as we all know and next gen will just cost to much for some to stik it out.

exclusives just may be the way to start some ip's out next gen as console sells will not differ from each other that much next gen. that last statment seems more likely.

Except, I believe it can be shown that games that take advantage of the strengths of the platforms they are released upon while minimizing the weaknesses of those platforms generally sell far better; and that it is nearly impossible to take advantage of the strengths of a diverse group of very different platforms.

Effectively, consider what would happen if you have to develop a game that supports a keyboard & mouse, conventional controller, Kinect (like) device, Wiimote/Playstation move, and a touch screen compared to developing a game designed around a sub-set of related user interfaces. The game that supports a small set of similar user interface devices is (probably) going to be able to provide a more unique, interesting, and compelling gameplay experience than the game that has to support all of those user interfaces; and (as a result) will likely end up being a better game that sells better.

Now, I'm not saying that multiplatform games are a bad idea but that it is possible that adding additional platforms can end up with lower game quality and (potentially) lower game sales.

I pretty much agree with this analysis and this is the main reason why PC games have taken a turn for the worse this generation; adaptation to consoles. Menu solutions, interfaces and sheer tech suffers on the PC in favor of fitting on consoles with less power and limited controls.

This really is a problem and I also worry about the next generation since there really haven't been many good games this gen imo. Just a long line of disappointments with the odd hit now and then. I have never been more bored in a generation before this.

I was thinking of something similar, though not identical, the other day, and that's the problem of hardware disparity and how that's likely to be aggravated in the coming generation.

Hardware disparity in terms of horsepower has become more pronounced with successive generations, and this generation more than any other, which is one of the reasons that the Wii hasn't been part of the whole multiplatform thing. Greater hardware disparity necessitates a greater shift in design and hrosepower between versions, which does not help developers who have been developing console multiplats since the nineties.

The problem here is that disparity in hardware doesn't look like it's going to be any less pronounced next generation. The potential gaps between release dates and differing corporate perspectives on the necessity of horsepower in pleasing the consumer (if you don't think Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all learned lessons then you're wrong), all these and more will end up contributing to what may be the biggest hardware horsepower disparity ever seen.

This is problematic because the disparity will need to be designed for.

The only solution I can think of offhand, while maintaining some reasonable level of cost, is that every third-party game, when intended to be multiplatform, is designed with scalable assets.

Which means a PC lead for every. Single. Multiplatform game.