IGNorance is bliss.

(I hope I got that saying right. )

People, all this survey is doing is stating the obvious.

Xbox 360 > Next Xbox development should, based on the rumors, mean the least development hurdles for programmers. The next Xbox is essentially an update, more powerful version of the Xbox 360. Same CPU mfg, same GPU mfg. At the core, no major hurdles.

Wii > Wii U, again based on rumors, should offer a slight learning curve, as well as a challenge in game design. The long-term challenge isn't learning how to take advantage of the hardware, but whether or not the pay off is there to do so. It's either going to be a rush to the gate to develop on the console, or it's going to be a wait and see effort.

PS3 > PS4, if rumors hold true, will offer the steepest learning curve, but one easily managed in a short period of time. With the PS4, it'll just be a matter of learning new APIs, not how to program code for a completely foreign computer architecture. Everything developers have learned from the Xbox 360, and will learn from the Wii U and next Xbox will apply to the PS4.

After a year or two, the games available across the three platforms (multi-platform third-party games) will be very similar and perform much the same. The only difference may be they take advantage of unique abilities of each console.

Nothing in this article is worth getting upset over. Nothing doesn't make sense, but it's also not a long-term issue.

For Nintendo fans, what is most important thing will be sales of the Wii U hardware and software during its first year. If the console takes off, then third-parties will adopt it.

For Sony fans, the most important thing to take to heart is that if rumors hold true, the days of difficult, time consuming development are behind PlayStation developers and they'll be able to spend more time customizing third-party games for each console than delaying them to try to finish up the development for one platform or another.

For Microsoft fans, you know the drill. Sit back, keep quiet, and let the chips fall where they may. Microsoft is a developer centric company, and the Xbox platform is no different. There's no reason to get concerned. Just don't stir the pot and get the other two camps boiling over.

We are in for our most evenly matched gaming generation in ages. It would not surprise me if that at the end of this next generation, all three companies have very similar sales figures.

 A lot of what Nintendo did resulted in third-party developers not developing on their consoles.

N64: Most of the games you mentioned were on 1st or 2nd party. The power meant some PC devs released games (ID, Blizzard even released Starcraft), but in general it was cheaper to release on PS1 or Saturn due to the extra expense of the cartridge. Games at this stage were becomming expensive to develop and they needed to reduce costs. The CD format was the primary way they acheived this. The relationship with third-parties during the SNES era probably didn't help matters. That's heavily on Nintendo for not keeping up with the changing market conditions.

GCN: The design choices were Nintendo's to make, meaning the purple colour and proprietary media. The small user base probably didn't help and nor did Microsoft likely entering developer mind-share with their PC-like console and developer tools. Sony had masses of market share so they were a given. If left with a choice between a manufacturer that gives you many PC-like tools you're used to and help keep costs down versus a manufacturer who have a smaller media format with average dev tools, who're you going to use?

Wii: EA actually supported the Wii fairly well compared to some others. Ubisoft also started with a lot of support for Wii on release before concentrating on the HD consoles. The devs obviously weren't getting as much return as they were expecting considerring the market share Wii had. The lack of programmable shaders on the GPU also meant it was harder to make multi-plat games for all 3 consoles.

tell that to the DS, 3DS, PS Vita, all of the tablets and smartphone companies that make a lot of money off of games on their devices.

Every rumor to date stated that the Wii U was extremely simple to program for. Straight from the anouncement of the system there were many "named" devs stating how they had everything ported over from the other consoles and running perfectly with ease. Nintendo themselves announced how they were making the dev kits to where the games would be as easy to program as they are with the Wii.

The general consenses was that the system was far easier to develop on than the PS3 or 360. Fast foward to new "anonymous devs with who provide not a shred of technically information despite what would be there obvious disregard for the NDA if what they were saying is true" providing more statements that amount to nothing other than: "The Wii U gonna suck" "PS3 and 360 rules" "We aren't fanboys pretending to be devs".


That is ignored. Now "everyone" jumps to support the belief that it is hard to program for despite all of the claims of its ease of porgramability made by many named devs just like with the claims of it being underpowered.

This is not accidental. These people simply want the worst news about it to be true. They hate Nintendo for some reason and will jump at any negative news that is posted. Legitimate journalism sites completely include. Especially the one we are on right now.

I don't think this poll suggests WiiU will be hard to develop for, just that the NeXt box will be easier to develop for. And I don't think anyone's said it's difficult to develop for. I remember some anonymous devs in one article complaining it wasn't powerful enough, but that's not the same as 'difficult'. You just have to read between the lines.

"By comparison, 63% of developers who spoke to IGN said the Wii U would be the most challenging platform to develop for. One creator went as far as saying, “we won’t be working on Wii U due to these complexities,” while another lamented the difficulty of moving innovative games unique to Wii U to other platforms."

Who cares how easy it is to develop for? How easy it is for the end users is what truely matters. Microsoft does excellent in that area as well.

Nintendo and Sony are not without their dominant strengths

Sony excels at creating lot of new meaningful new IPs
Nintendo excels at keeping their fans happy with their core IPs with fresh new games

@bolded Developers, I imagine.

A bit more for the thread, found courtesy of pokemonbrawvg:

http://gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=178422

"- porting current gen games to the Wii U isn’t as easy as originally thought

“(Games made on 360 will be) much easier to port to Wii U than PS3 versions. A lot less headache involved because their architecture is similar. Technically, you can just recompile X360 to the Wii U and it’ll pretty much run, but PS3 to Wii U is much much trickier.”

- latest SDK hardware is final, but the software keeps updating

“We’ve spent a lot of time creating our own tools for the X360 this generation, and we’ve already tweaked a lot of the tools to work on the Wii U. But if you code on the Wii U from ground up and have to use middleware, it’s probably gonna be tougher than doing an X360 game from ground up.”"