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Forums - Gaming Discussion - PS3 & 360 close in capability - Ubisoft boss (good figures inside!)

shams on 07 November 2007

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=30375

Interesting comments/figures are highlighted: 

Ubisoft president doesn't believe one is harder to develop for than the other

Yves Guillemot, president and CEO of Ubisoft, has stated his belief that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are very close in terms of what is possible from a development perspective.

He told the BMO Capital Markets conference yesterday that the two next-generation machines were "close in what we can do with them" and that while the PS3 has some elements that are better, the Xbox 360 has other advantages.

He also commented that he thought that the rest of this year "should be a great year for the PS3" in light of the price cut, a move he welcomed as one which would have a positive effect on sales.

Additionally he explained that in Ubisoft's experience, translating a game from the Xbox 360 platform to the PS3 took no extra effort than doing it the other way around.

"What we do now is create for the PS3 and 360 at the same time, and it doesn't cost more than 10 per cent extra to develop for the other machine.

"Before it was costing us more, about 20 per cent, just because it was difficult to learn the PS3 hardware, but now our engines are done and we can easily develop for both machines."

The company's chief financial officer, Alain Martinez, added some more detail on the cost of production and potential profits between the next-gen platforms and the Nintendo DS, which the company has been continuing to support heavily.

He explained that while titles for the Xbox 360 and PS3 might sell for around EUR 11 more than DS titles, they cost EUR 15-17 million to produce compared to an average of about EUR 500,000 for a DS game.

That means that while the company only needs to sell around 100,000 units to hit its average 22 per cent margin on direct costs for DS games, it needs to sell around 1.3 million for the same result with a next-gen game - even though gross margins on the DS are 6 per cent lower than for next-gen titles.

On the subject of in-game advertising, Guillemot believes that such revenue sources could account for up to 15 per cent of development costs in the future - although he wouldn't be drawn on whether or not that would affect the final price point of games.

Wow... 1.3m (shipped) units for next-gen title to break even - vrs 100,000 for the DS.

 



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TWRoO on 07 November 2007

wow, DS games are cheap to make.



Gazz on 07 November 2007

""that while the PS3 has some elements that are better, the Xbox 360 has other advantages."

How to use words that explain absolutely nothing, a masterclass by the Ubisoft president. My car has some elements that are better, and my plane has other advantages (as you see, I paid attention in class).



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godf on 07 November 2007

They're close in capability?

Do you think that's why all their games look and play so similar?



Faxanadu on 07 November 2007
godf said:
They're close in capability?

Do you think that's why all their games look and play so similar?

no, wrong. one of them actually has a fourth dimension which most people are just not capable of perceiving including me. More and more I figure it must be the time factor "waiting for big game releases".

On topic - very interesting read. I find the dev cost for a DS game surprisingly low - what kind of quality do they want to achieve in their games?



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Words Of Wisdom on 07 November 2007

What's that he said?  Games become cheaper after the engines for the various systems are built? 

...

Duh.


Stupid article.  The DS comment was the only thing of value IMO.



HappySqurriel on 07 November 2007

As a general rule, two processors which have similar die-sizes and are produced using the same manufacturing process have similar performance ...

Now, this doesn't tell the whole story because a processor that is designed for a specific task is likely going to trade-off general processing performance in order to increase processing performance for their specific task; for example, a very modest GPU can easily outperform your CPU in rendering tasks but wouldn't run a word processor well (if you could even program the Word Processor to run on the GPU).

The XBox and PS3 CPUs are two processors which have similar die-sizes and are produced using the same manufacturing process, the main difference between them is they have drastically different architectures which should give strengths to each processor under certain tasks.



Gamerace on 07 November 2007

Well, at least the 1.3m gives us a guideline as to if a title has been successful or not on the PS3/360. Now... how many PS3 exclusives have hit those #'s worldwide. Hmmm.....



 

Griffin on 07 November 2007

Are they saying it cost 24.6-26 million USD to make a game on both platforms together or for each?



Nick on 07 November 2007

I don't imagine it costs too much for them to port a game. So whether the figure is for 1 game or both it should be a pretty similar number either way.



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