...but Lost Odyssey was made using Epic's Unreal Engine and that's a very fun JRPG!

...and here I thought MS was paying for timed exclusivity. Looks like it was just problems with UE on the PS3. You'd think that after they put UE3 on the PS3 that the engine would be easier to work with on that platform...

You can't associate Celine Dion with the rest of us Canadians.  I don't know who let her out of Quebec, but someone should get fired for that.

I'm not really concerned anymore because now she's Las Vegas's problem.

I thought that FFXIII was made using the Unreal 3 engine. In a Game Informer article interview early this year, SE was quoted as saying that they loved the Unreal 3 engine they were using for FFXIII and were amazed at how much quicker it was to program graphical capabilities for the current HD systems. Am I mistaken, or could this also be why FFXIII is being delayed, and delayed......could be.

FFXIII is being made using the S-E propriety engine "Crystal Tools" (formerly known as the White Engine).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIII#Development

It's what S-E will be using for many of their upcoming games.

Ahhhh, thank you for the clarification, I will adjust ;).

Nothing new!
It looks like this year xbox 360 have one incidentally exclusive - Frontlines (UE3 engine).
One incidentally timed 360 exclusive - Last Remnant (UE3 engine).
One incidentally timed 360/Wii exclusive - Alone in the Dark (I don't know the engine)

Not only UE3 engine struggle on PS3. Games like Quake ET and Far Cry 2 prove this.
Expect more delays on PS3.

Absolutely agree with everything here.

At some point, people must give credit to Microsoft for making their system easy to program. We heard stories before the 360 was released of Microsoft furiously visiting third parties finding out how they wanted the system made; we now here stories constantly of how much easier the system is to develop for. Some people seem to want to insist that this isn't true, or that even if it is developers are lazy stupid heads if they rely on streamlined architecture. Come on guys -- Microsoft very consciously made their platform easy to develop for, and it has paid off. The end.

I also strongly agree that Microsoft moneyhats people, but not everything they've gotten in the last couple years is a result of that. Please remember that MS has a larger marketshare and sells more software (on average -- not this week!) than Sony does right now; in addition to the streamlined architecture, this explains why Microsoft seems to be getting breaks with third parties that Sony may not be getting right now.

They could have made the 360 more like a cutdown PC, like the original XBox was. An ordinary x86 CPU would have simplified things even more (but it wouldn't have been the right choice).

Microsoft has an OS monopoly on the PC, many developers use their tools to create games. It was already expected way before the 360 would be released they would concentrate on easier PC to 360 migration.

Personally I prefer companies to concentrate on the actual technology potential, if this involves needing to adapt to better and more efficient coding pratices and introducing some backwards compatibility issues I still prefer this.

Windows 1.-0 up to ME could have been made to be better products if the OS wouldn't have to take into account an easy MSDOS to Windows migration. But Microsoft's monopoly might comes from the legacy software library, so from a business point of view this made sense, far more so than from a technology point of view.

I think there was a problem with the dev on PS3, and SE let M$ pay them to delay it a tiny little bit more to make it a proper timed exclusive
Have they announced what engine SO is going to work on

So you're agreeing with me and Bod, right? You acknowledge that they did the right thing by creating an architecture specifically for the 360.

From what I heard, the ease of PC to 360 migration is due to development tools (Visual Studio most likely), maybe APIs, not the architecture by itself (although its simplicity compared to the PS3 must help somewhat). As you said in the beginning, the architecture is different. Coding practices are more conditioned by the architecture than tools, so it seems all of us agree.