Lol, yep.  Or ones that come a few days later, like AC4.  Of course, in about a year or so, MS will be in no position to demand anything like this from developers.  Then we can go back to the good old days where devs tried to take advantage of what each console had to offer, without a patch.

And you would have a lot of developers talking about it.  Especially some of these indie devs that have worked with microsoft in the past and dont seem to have any problem talking smack about them.  

Im sorry, but if a console maker is forcing developers to downgrade their games to appear on their platform, you would know about it.  Nda or no, it would have been explicitly said by this point by some disgruntled developer or another.

this conspiracy crap is nothing but crap

Excellent! I almost didnt sense your sarcasm. It was so heavy! I was going to just give you one of those disgruntled developers interview...

Ok I still give it!

"There had been mentions beforehand that there was a launch parity clause in the contract, with the exception of games that were already signed to another platform during the announcement of their self-publishing program. Thus, before we signed with Microsoft, we e-mailed Sony that we quickly wanted to sign Nuclear Throne with them with a month of exclusivity."

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/12/04/xbox-one-same-day-launch-clause-nudged-nuclear-throne-to-ps4/?a_dgi=aolshare_twitter

Lol, that was a great article to prove my point!

Indie developers in the Xbox One publishing program, ID@Xbox, get two console development kits, a Unity license and the opportunity to self-publish their games – in return, Microsoft asks that the games launch same-day on Xbox One and other console platforms. Launch parity, rather than exclusivity.

hurray!  We can now put to rest any talk that these parity quotes have to do with content or graphics because they are only talking about release time frame!  

Also, as this article also points out, the launch parity is only required for those that sign up for the id@xbox program.  Thats is, in exchange for getting two dev kits, unity license, and self publishing you agree to release the game at least the same day on the x1.  

Seriously, that article puts the original article in perspective and the whole argument of this thread to bed.

/thread

That makes no sense whatsoever.  It's not like they are going to take 6 months to a year to port it to the Xbox One.  They only gave Sony 1 month exclusivity.  Sounds like it would be no hassle for them to have both versions ready at the same time, espeically since they are very similar in architecture, plus Nuclear Throne isn't really a demanding game.  Seems more like they wanted the freedom to do with the game what they wanted, without any demands from MS.

The quick patches for AC4 and COD are the best illustrations of this.  When have we seen a patch on any sytem that doubled the resolution?  Never.

The thing is , because of the relative eveness of PS360  consoles , no 3rd party developers where creating PS360 games last gen that came close to having big enough differences to enforce such a policy , certainly not indie developers.

this leads me to believe that the policy was more about them , stopping multiplats from becoming defacto second party games unless they did it on the 360. ,than any kind of lowest common denominator rule .

This gen now sees  the parity of the two consoles under threat , and people are looking at what does equality between multiplats this gen mean  and has it changed , I think it is like a lot of such corporate policies , a blanket policy deliberately open to interpretation.

Oh well. Multiplat ps4-pc players will still end up with the better looking/running copy 90% of the time. Exclusives are where it matters.

read the article he gave me, they explain their reasons.  

"Honestly, we've had enough trouble with our promise for a simultaneous release forLuftrausers, so by getting rid of parity we'd be able to focus on one platform for Nuclear Throne first.

seems like they did have a problem with a simultaneous launch.  This is straight from the horses mouth people.  An explicit explanation of what is actually going down here.  There isn't some grand conspiracy, microsoft is giving free dev kits and unity license in exchange for a day one simultanous release with their id@xbox program.  This doesn't even have anything to do with the full retail games.  

Also, using launch game patches as some kind of proof of something nefarious going down is ridiculous.  

the quotes on this thread are only about the id@xbox program though it seems.  So basically in exchange for dev kits and unity license they agree to release their game the same day on x1.  So it apparently isn't some corporate policy, just what developers agree to in order to get free stuff.