Come on. Surely you can come up with an example better than Epic. They made the engine itself and we all know it was originally heavily optimized for the PC and 360. Don't remember the first year of Unreal Engine games on PS3? They aren't pretty.

..And so should you.

Lately I've gotten to thinking about the future of the gaming landscape and where we are headed in terms of the games available for each system. It seems a little archaic in 2009 with all the advancements in technology to just produce games for either the Wii, Xbox 360, or PS3. I realize that thinking this way calls into question some of my favorite developers (Valve and Bungie to name a couple), but with the quality multiplatform games being released every year, would it really take that much more effort to code the game for another system?

To me there is absolutely no proof that developing a game for multiple platforms reduces the quality of that game. When you look at Borderlands, AC2, DA:Origins, GTA4, and many others, can you really tell me that the game would have been so much better if they had just chosen one system to code it for? I think that a quality developer wouldn't need to restrict themselves in order to establish a fanbase.

Using exclusive games as ammo to why your system is better may be all well and good, but at the end of the day have you actually thought about /why/ that game is exclusive? Even quality projects on the Wii have impressive enough graphics where you would think, with enough time and energy, certain "HD" games could make the transition without a huge loss in quality.

I'm sure I am going to get enough "lol, Uncharted 2 would look like ass on the 360, noob" comments,  but considering the massive amount of people playing video games on each system, it just seems like the big three spend  far too much money gaining exclusives that could be used on actually improving the quality of their respective units.

Just looking at prospective trends in both gaming and computing (I.E. Motion Control/Cloud Computing) it seems that in the future, there really will be little to no excuse as to why a game can't be made, in some capacity, on all three systems. Yes, you could argue to me  that loyalty is important to you, but honestly, that developers "loyalty" is really just a very fat paycheck. And I personally would rather that money be spent on quality of hardware (Less RRoD, Cross game chat, 720/1080P on a system made in 2007) than securing that my precious Halo resides on only one system.

So have I accidently taken a bite out of a cookie laced with cocaine  and am speaking crazy talk, or do I have some valid points? Discuss.

Epic isn't that bad of an example I think, they even got sued for the underdeveloped state of their engine on the PS3 by 3rd party multi-platform developers. The engine now runs fine (with help), but according to developers they showed a lack of effort at first (and maybe still, as there is still a lot of potential by better utilizing the Cell's SPUs).

I hope Crytek will rival them and the CryEngine will meet expectations for multi-platform development and get Epic off their butts.

I'm not sure why you're disagreeing with me, since you basically just repeated what I said. Your original point was to praise Naughty Dog for making an engine optimized for a specific platform, and I just pointed out that you're condemning Epic for doing the same thing.

..And so should you.

Lately I've gotten to thinking about the future of the gaming landscape and where we are headed in terms of the games available for each system. It seems a little archaic in 2009 with all the advancements in technology to just produce games for either the Wii, Xbox 360, or PS3. I realize that thinking this way calls into question some of my favorite developers (Valve and Bungie to name a couple), but with the quality multiplatform games being released every year, would it really take that much more effort to code the game for another system?

To me there is absolutely no proof that developing a game for multiple platforms reduces the quality of that game. When you look at Borderlands, AC2, DA:Origins, GTA4, and many others, can you really tell me that the game would have been so much better if they had just chosen one system to code it for? I think that a quality developer wouldn't need to restrict themselves in order to establish a fanbase.

Using exclusive games as ammo to why your system is better may be all well and good, but at the end of the day have you actually thought about /why/ that game is exclusive? Even quality projects on the Wii have impressive enough graphics where you would think, with enough time and energy, certain "HD" games could make the transition without a huge loss in quality.

I'm sure I am going to get enough "lol, Uncharted 2 would look like ass on the 360, noob" comments,  but considering the massive amount of people playing video games on each system, it just seems like the big three spend  far too much money gaining exclusives that could be used on actually improving the quality of their respective units.

Just looking at prospective trends in both gaming and computing (I.E. Motion Control/Cloud Computing) it seems that in the future, there really will be little to no excuse as to why a game can't be made, in some capacity, on all three systems. Yes, you could argue to me  that loyalty is important to you, but honestly, that developers "loyalty" is really just a very fat paycheck. And I personally would rather that money be spent on quality of hardware (Less RRoD, Cross game chat, 720/1080P on a system made in 2007) than securing that my precious Halo resides on only one system.

So have I accidently taken a bite out of a cookie laced with cocaine  and am speaking crazy talk, or do I have some valid points? Discuss.

No, Naughty Dog is an exclusive developer and Epic markets itself as providing multi-platform technology. From a technical perspective it makes no sense for Naughty Dog (even if they could) to make an Uncharted 3 for both the 360 and PS3 (the Cell processor with 8 processors vs 3 cores, Blu-Ray vs DVD, free online gaming for everyone with broadband internet, default harddrive to take advantage of, etc). It would lead to many sacrifices with regard to development.

Regarding Epic, they said they already maxed out the 360 with the original Gears of War, from a technical perspective it would make sense for them to tackly a more capable platform like the PS3 and really push forward. Of course I know Microsoft has a finger in the pie, but from a company like them it should at least be expected that they try to push their multi-platform technology to the best of their abilities for all supported platforms.

They did already. It's called Unreal Tournament III and it looks worse than Gears of War.

Your previous comments don't make much sense since any developer looking to create games on the most capable platform would undoubtedly choose the PC and not a console. As an open platform with a multitude of ways to develop for it, no closed, constricted console can compare. We're getting to the point here where I think you're just allowing your PS3 biases to shine through. It's clouding the legitimacy of your argument.