ChichiriMuyo said:
Wow, Squilliam, were you making a joke? MS hasn't put support into JRPGs so much as bought a bunch of exclusives So they give money to developers and then the developers run down to the local shop and buy a bunch of candy? No they actually use it to make games... who would have thought huh?

. Also, can you really say that they are driving prices down when they've had a single price drop in three years that amounted to a $50 savings? Plus, there's absolutely nothing to prove anything MS has done, bar money-hatting, has actually increased the number of games on the market. If there was only Microsoft OR Sony the price of that console would be $50-100 higher than it is now, competition baby.

". Quote

The 360, thus far, has been stupidly easy to dev for. So easy in fact that one coder and one artist can make a 360 game from start to finish by themselves. 360 has been welcomed by many because it has taken some of the risk out of game development at a time when it was very much needed. It's helped our ability to meat a deadline with a quality product. You can get a good game out on 360 in a 10-18 month timeline, even if you are starting from scratch. You get great tools, great support. Microsoft kisses developer ass because they understand the value of game programmers to their bottom line.

Now enter the PS3. It's going back to the old days of screw you developers, we don't care if it's a pain to work with. Yup, it's complicated. Yup, theres little support. Yup, it will take you years to get it to do what 360 can do out of the box. Too bad, that's how it is, now get to work. In the above scenario where do you think coders will flock to? If all this extra risk/work yielded a tangible benefit then sure, the end justifies the means. The problem is that so far it's only yielding at best parity. Look back at posts about a year or so ago and you'll read how people were expecting PS3 games to be many times better than 360 games by Xmas '07. Needless to say, that hasn't happened. In fact, many games are still having difficultly hitting parity."

Quote 2

".

Maybe this is just in the USA, but I'm noticing many trends here. The obvious are previously mentioned things like skyrocketing budgets. Less obvious are constantly missed deadlines and their consequences. Not noticed by many is whats happening internally at many studios. I'm seeing more and more juniors, less and less veterans. I'm seeing people who've been coding games for 10 years burn out and exit the industry totally. I'm hearing grumblings of people tired of having to sleep at work or not see their spouse for weeks on end just to meet a milestone. I'm seeing people devote their lives to ship a game on both platforms by crunching 12-16 hours days for weeks on end, only to all get laid off right after the project ships.

To a certain extent, this has always happened in the industry. But it now seems to be getting more frequent. People exiting the business is becoming as frequent as people entering it. Expectations are becoming unrealistic. Quality of life is severely down. In some ways his blog to me was a way to say that overly complex platforms are not welcome anymore, when it's clear that things can be done in a simpler manner with a similar result. 360 was a step in the right direction to me not because it was done by Microsoft, but because it helped the industry from a quality of life perspective. For perhaps the first time ever, the developper got great tools and support from day one. PS3 to me is trying to pull things back in the other direction where the developer is basically cattle and expected to sacrifice himself to the mighty mother ship. That's just antiquated to me now.

I recall an event that happened in the last crunch where we were trying solve an issue on PS3 and one of the coders I was with told me he had missed his daughters first words because he was crunching. Sounds silly and mellow dramatic, but that kind of thing just gets one thinking. At the time, which was actually just before my now ill fated charalatan post, it got me thinking why in the hell should we be struggling like this to get basics working when this was all so easy on 360? Why do we tolerate this? Well, from the amount of people exiting the industry, it would appear that less and less are.

He may not have intended any of this with his blog, but thats partly how I read it. Help us out, don't treat us like a cog in the machine. Give us a balanced machine, and support us. I like the direction 360 took the industry. I do not like the PS3 pulling us back. It doesn't need to be this way. Worse yet, I can't help but wonder how long it can continue on this way. As the people playing games have aged, so have the people creating them. People want to see their kids and families and will be less and less tolerant of sacrificing them to meet milestone 3b."

Can I say well supported arguments? This guys a developer he works on both PS3/Xbox360 this is an oldie so his comments on PS3 development aren't current, but the points on how Microsoft have improved the lives of developers is.

If they wouldn't have supported their system's development the games would almost certainly still exist, they just might not have made it to the 360.

Really, not even one of your arguments really holds water. Yours isn't anymore - I like how spread apart your post is, liked i've blown it away? Ya!

ChichiriMuyo said:
Look, man, it doesn't matter that they are throwing money at companies making JRPGs. That's not really supporting them, Wow I never knew that giving developers money isn't supporting them. Explain that part to me again? that's just covering for the money they won't be making because they aren't putting the game on a system where it'll sell decently. JRPGs have begun to sell decently on the Xbox360 good ones will soon be million sellers. The games would get made with or without MS, and they'd sell more copies on the PS3 Stike the PS3 obviouslyor Wii. Again, that's not support, they are just paying these companies the money upfront for the sales they are going to lose by being in bed with MS. Oh so the system with the highest 3rd party sales is a losing proposition huh?Outside of Mistwalker, there's absolutely nothing to say they are supporting the genre at all, and Sony put a whole lot of support into Square back in the day that resulted in games that were actually really good instead of really average. Oh I see, so when Sony supports a company its to help them produce good games, whereas when Microsoft does it, its just to make up for supposedly poor sales??

There's absolutely nothing to say that the prices would be unchanged if the 360 didn't exist. Frankly, if MS didn't jump the gun on this gen the PS3 would very likely have launched a little later at $400, but Sony had to move before they were ready to make sure they wouldn't lose the market completely. It may have looked like a bad decision because of the way it has played out and it may look like the 360 has forced Sony to drop price, but that's really not true. Overall, MS has increased the costs to gamers, not lowered them. Not admirable at all. So how does your argument that Microsoft didn't force Sony to lower their prices support the argument that Microsoft has increased the costs for gamers? I'll give you a clue... it doesn't. Furthermore the concept of competition is pretty obvious, you take two companies - both engaged in a little price competition and voila the price comes down. Its an amazing concept.

Also, I never said they didn't make the work easier, so I don't know why you are arguing about that. What I've said is that it hasn't increased the number of games that exist. If they didn't make it so easy, they just would have gotten fewer games on their system. More games would be PC exclusive instead of PC/360. More games would have stayed PS3 exclusive instead of going multiplat. Where are the games that sismply wouldn't exist? Lets see - Easier to make games, I can make more games, wow. Its a pretty simple concept. I'll expand on that concept - easier to code, so less risk, faster product delivery so better cashflow for smaller developers/publishers, more profit so more developers can be hired they all add up. Can you name one? Condemned 2 its too niche to be profitably developed on either the PC or the Xbox360 alone. Add the two together and you have a sustainable market to develop for. You asked for one.

No, all you can do is post someone else's blogs. A blog that says that coding has always been the way it is now to some extent. And it's true, programming has always been like that. Long hours, little respect, high burn out rates. MS didn't do much to alleviate that, because they tools they use are basically the same ones that already exist for PCs. If those games weren't getting made for the 360, they'd still get made. Period. Read the quotes again. This time with comprehension please.

As I said, none of the claims you have made are well formulated. You are suggesting that things that have almost nothing to do with one another have a cause and effect relationship adn that the cause leads back to MS. I'll give you simple cause and effect if you want. If I gave you lube - it will be easier for you to jerk yourself off. If I also give you porn, it will give you more incentive to jerk yourself off. So therefore if I give you lube and porn I would expect you to jerk off more. Now replace lube with better tools and porn with money and you'll understand Microsofts relationship with software developers. If anything caused prices to be driven down this generation it's the Wii, not the 360 The Wii and the HD consoles live in different market segments. They aren't nearly as good subsitutes with the Xbox360 as the PS3 is. which has more expensive games and has spent 3 years being more expensive than any successful console has ever been. Bla and in the past Japan was hugely important but nowadays the U.K sells more of the big consoles than Japan, I think precedent doesnt apply as much as you think. If anything is causing more games to exist that wouldn't it's the Wii, because it provides a new experience and encourages developers to look in new directions. If anyone is responsible for JRPGs existing in the numbers they do now, it's Sony for helping Square become a major player in the Western market, Wow, I guess Final Fantasy 1-6 didnt exist and Nintendo had nothing to do with Square huh? not MS who is subsidizing games based on the sales that are lost when the game goes from PS3 to360.

MS hasn't done a single thing you are claiming, and your logic to back it up is essentially baseless. All your base is belong to me.