Mike
Portugal@Home Member
http://www.productwiki.com disse:I would like to preface this piece by stating that the 360 has won in the competition between it and the PS3. As has been stated many times by various media, critics and developers, including Nintendo themselves, the Wii exists in a class of its own In terms of absolute numbers maybe the Wii will come out on top, which I plan to write about, but dealing with the Wii lays outside the scope of this article.
On The Development Side
1. Developer Ecosystem
By releasing the 360 a year before the other next-gen consoles, Microsoft has a head start where a large part of next-gen development is dedicated almost exclusively to the 360. What this means is that there is now hundreds of man-years that have already been dedicated towards learning the inside and out of the platform and how to manipulate it successfully. This delta in man-year experience will remain constant in the near future, and as I will elaborate upon, will only increase in North America. The significance of this difference will have an effect on the way games are published. A more mature talent pool means that there are more potential employees to choose from, meaning employees can be hired for cheaper. The PS3 developer talent pool in NA is much smaller and even more specialized due to the unique nature of the PS3 architecture. As should be obvious, the PS3 programmers that can make the hardware sing are going to command a premium salary for their rare talents and skills. Less people that cost more money make developing a PS3 game are more expensive and riskier proposition.
And then there's Arcade...
A resounding success, and it's only getting sweeter with the announcement of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night being released early next year. For developers, XBLA is a low-cost, low-risk way that they can dip their toes into 360 development. If a dev/publisher had previously been non-Xbox before and aren't sure about the platform then they can spend a relatively little amount of money and develop a cheap XBLA game. Or even port an old classic they might have lying around. For indie developers many already know how great XBLA has and will be to the industry. When looking at a return on investment, having XBLA available makes the possible financial return far greater for little extra cost, meaning it will be easier to convince yourself, team members and investors to develop a project. Overall you'll be seeing more indie developers creating games for XBLA, 360, and more indie games in general. This kind of development has the same effect of increasing the amount of people who are knowledgeable about working with the 360.
And then comes the Creator's Club...
Microsoft is releasing an express version of their XNA framework that will allow hobbyist developers to create games in a friendlier environment than before. Devs can make games for their PC for free, and for an annual charge of $99 get the ability to play their own and other people's games on their 360. By itself, this is a great initiative that will hopefully foster and encourage the growing indie development community, and take the steps that Sony started with their Yaraoze program and run with it. This goes back to the developer experience thing, but what's going to happen is that there will be a cottage industry revolving around the Creator's Club. How big of a community this becomes remains to be seen, the important point is that the talent pool that developers can hire people from to work on a 360 game increases. This is especially true if MS targets universities as that will provide companies with a host of experienced programmers for cheap.
2. Developer Tools
Sony has dramatically improved their developer support and tools they provide for the PS3 in comparison to the PS2. The problem with this comparison is that the PS2 development environment was really quite horrible. Later on in the console's life the tools matured and expanded to provide a decent amount of support, so it wasn't always bad. Developers are starting off at this more mature state of affairs now that Sony purchased the company who made ProDG and is including that system as standard in the PS3 dev-kits. That's great news for developers. However, the fact of the matter remains that Microsoft has one of the best developer tool and support groups in the world. Microsoft is a software company that understands what programmers need. This is most evident in their Visual Studio package, which some debate as being the best, but nobody disagrees that it's in the top tier of packages available. In the game development arena MS has provided tools that go beyond VS and provide game-dev specific programs and plug-ins. Many of these tools are actually cross-platform and aid in non-Xbox development situations, and are freely available in the DirectX SDKs (XACT, PIX, XNA Build, etc). For PS3-exclusive developers some of these tools may not be compatible, among the other Xbox-only tools that MS provides, which makes development in general a more costly and time consuming effort.
3. Hardware Complexity - Cell Processor
The asymmetric nature of Cell plus the greater amount of data-management required by programmers creates a more complicated and difficult programming model.
Think of the PS3 as an assembly line. Here's a handy picture to illustrate the point
There are some omissions and inconsistencies in this picture compared to the actual thing, but I'll take any chance I can to show off typewriters being made. Imagine you have a sweet digital car that you want to render on your PS3, what actually happens? Well, the nitty-gritty of rendering pipelines takes up volumes of textbooks, and if you're really interested in that you probably already know more than me. Here's a general overview. You start off with your original model information that was created in some 3D package, then transform that model according to how it's placed in the game world, then apply any kinds of damage or customization that has been applied to the car, and send it off to the graphics card to display. The graphics card takes the model and paints the sides of it with beautiful textures and finally come the pixel shading effects to get those really cool reflections and refractions before it shows up on your screen. Once the data is in the graphics card, things are pretty even between the two consoles since they both use normal graphics techniques. 360 has the whole unified shader thing, but I don't think that really requires any special code. I could be wrong on that though.
So the major difference comes from managing that beefy Cell processor, where the 360 is more inline with traditional CPUs. The reason why Cell is more difficult is two fold.
1. Asymmetry - in a computing sense this indicates that all the processing components you're dealing with are not made equal. In the PS3 you have the main Power Processor that acts as the foreman, and the SPEs which are special purpose. Conceptually speaking, the difference isn't that big of a deal, however traditionally almost all multi-processor systems have been symmetric. When you hear those reports about supercomputers, they don't say "2000 Athlons, 1000 P4s, 500 Celerons", it's usually one number of one component, even if those components are entire computers themselves in the case of clusters, the theme is homogeneous. This goes back to developer experience in that most programmers in the world today have a lot more experience with symmetric multiprocessing systems than the asymmetric ones. Fittingly, the people that have the most experience with asymmetric systems are former PS2 developers, and this is exactly why you see the companies that achieved great results on the PS2 are already doing a fantastic job on PS3 (Konami and Square).
2. Memory management - again, similar to the PS2 the Cell uses a memory setup known as local storage. Each of those SPE worker guys has their own little pool of data they work with. As far as I know that local storage is determined manually by the programmers. So programmers don't have to deal with only which SPEs are assigned to which tasks, but getting them the relevant data as well. Considering the local storage is quite small, this can involve some tricks to use effectively. And again, theoretically this doesn't seem like a big deal, but traditional computers don't use this kind of system. A very smart programmer can make this system work, and work extremely well, especially since the SPEs are incredibly fast at what they do. But how much talent is required, and how many people can utilize the system effectively? There are only so many Tim Sweeneys and John Carmack's in the world.
4. Computer Love
Many people bemoan Microsoft for stealing away PC developers to the Xbox platform, blaming that for some of the decline of the PC game industry. But we all know that WoW has done more damage to OTHER PC games than all combined forces and events before it. This past year, and especially at E3, Microsoft laid out some grandiose plans for PC games to coincide with the release of Vista. This includes substantial marketing budgets, a cohesive brand across all PC games, and more investment into the platform in general. What the results of these statements actually are remains to be seen, but if they pan out as MS expects then that could be a real boost to the PC platform. Unsurprisingly for MS, a boost to the PC platform will drive a boost to the 360 platform as well. In the Xbox days due to the similarity in development gamers saw many games that were simultaneously released on the PC and Xbox. This similarity between the two platforms is even greater now than ever before, so by increasing the PC market, MS is increasing the overall 360/PC market which will further entice developers to create games for those two complimentary platforms.
5. Free Marketing
The Xbox Live marketplace has given publishers a proven method to communicate directly with a captive audience. The people that are downloading the content from Marketplace want to hear about the latest games, want to see the trailers, and want to play the demos. There are no distribution costs associated with putting content on the Marketplace, all the costs are associated with developing the materials in the first place. Many publishers would already develop these materials so having the Marketplace gives them the best avenue possible to get those items into the hands of the people that matter most. Look at what happened at E3. While fans of Sony and Nintendo had to settle for blurry cellphone videos for a while until direct feed material came out, even before Microsoft's press conference was over, thousands of 360s were already downloading the 720p Halo 3 announcement trailer.
An even bigger and more powerful marketing tool exists on Xbox Live in the form of the Friends List. Anybody that has seen their friends list the day after a big game comes out knows exactly what I'm talking about. When you see a page full of people, with every single one of them having the word GRAW, or Oblivion, and more recently Dead Rising you feel something. Especially if you don't own that game. You feel like you're missing out. You feel compelled to take part in the same fun that everybody else seems to be having. Not just for the sake of saying "me too" but also being able to share in those experiences on forums and even within Live itself. It's the same effect as walking down the street and seeing a crowd of people, you just have to walk over and see what all the fuss is about: you just have to buy or rent that game to see what's the hype.
6. Less First Party Competition
Sony made a name for itself with the Playstation franchise and achieved phenomenal success not because of games released by Sony, but instead because of titles released by 3rd parties. Square with Final Fantasy, Rockstar and GTA, Activision and Tony Hawk, EA and Madden. In the 32-bit generation with the PSOne and N64, Nintendo shots themselves in the foot, not because they went with carts, but because Nintendo charged substantially more (2-3x) in licensing fees than Sony did. Publishers were happy with Sony. Publishers are still happy with Sony in the PS2 generation. However, one notable thing happened during the past 5 years and that is Sony's emergence as a game-development powerhouse. In fact Sony is now one of the premier developers in the world, comparable only to Nintendo and EA. Check out these charts...
Looking at Nintendo's numbers it's instantly obvious that Nintendo takes the lion's share of the game sales on their platforms. On the Playstation platforms the game sales are substantially more spread out. Take note that these numbers are from 2001, but there's been very little that's happened over this generation that changes these things, except for Sony's growth. When publishers look at the moves that Sony has been doing in regards to consolidating their studios under one umbrella, and going on a pretty big acquisition spree buying up smaller developers, they have to start thinking. How much of a powerhouse is Sony going to be on the PS3, and how much room is that going to leave the rest of them? Microsoft has actually gone the other way decreasing the number of games they put out, not that it mattered too much anyway since a majority of MGS games didn't sell exceptionally well. The point being that publishers don't really have to worry about Microsoft pulling the rug from underneath them, aside from some major titles (Gears of War, Halo 3) which will do more to grow the 360 market than anything.
7. Additional Sources of Revenue
Say what you want about them, but it's clear to publishers that Microtransactions are a success. Activision recently released numbers on the amount of people that purchased the extra Call of Duty 2 maps and they were surprisingly high. It's unknown as to whether or not other games have achieved similar success, but looking at the number of extra-content that Bethesda has released for Oblivion it's easy to see they're making money off of it. I would not be surprised to learn that the $12 Ghost Recon map-pack was a great success for Ubisoft either. These kind of extra revenue streams are a great incentive for developers and publishers alike. In old times, once the game gets sent to manufacturing, that was it, maybe they'll do a sequel or expansion pack, but they'll have to go through the whole process all over again. With downloadable content the gamers have already bought into your game and franchise. They're already playing the marketing vehicle. All you have to do is create the content and let your game do the work for you in notifying the user and letting them buy it instantaneously. And now Microsoft is introducing the concept of Consumables where gamers can purchase items over and over again (in-game currency, items, etc).
On the Gamer Side
8. 360 Gamers Buy A Lot of Games
After 9 months on the market the 360 has software tie ratio of 4.61. In comparison, after 14-15 months on the market the PS2 had an attach ratio of 4.5 (source). Tie ratios go up with time, so extrapolating forward with the 360, or backwards with the PS2, we can see that the 360 is doing extremely well. There is something to be said about the quality of the games released as the 360 has already seen many great games (Oblivion, GRAW and Fight Night). For this reason it's difficult to determine if the 360 crowd just buys more games in general or the games are more appealing. Personally, I have the strong suspicion that the 360 has captured a very important gaming demographic...
9. Current 360 Gamers Are Hardcore
What does hardcore even mean? Everybody has their own definition, my own is very simple. A hardcore gamer is someone that buys a lot of games (more than 30 in a generation) and plays them regularly (20+ hours a week). While these guys might not be a very large part of the market, I think they have a reach and influence that extends way beyond their small numbers. The hardcore gamers are the ones that all their friends come to when they want to know about the latest games, or what system they should by for themselves or someone they know. The hardcore gamers are also the ones that are willing to take a chance, have more refined tastes and purchase the niche and obscure titles.
I strongly believe that the early 360 audience is made up of this influential group precisely because of the numbers that have been given. 4.6 attach ratio, 60% Live attach ratio, millions of items downloaded off of the Marketplace. These statistics characterize a very enthusiastic demographic, and I don't think the 360 created these gamers. These gamers already existed, and played a large part in the PS2's early success. And the really great thing about the PS2 was the number of games released that appealed to all different kinds of audiences, taking me to the next point.
10. 360 Gamers Buy Niche Games
The great thing for publishers is that 360 gamers aren't buying just the huge blockbuster games. Even the smaller niche titles are doing well, as seen by the success of Rockstar's Table Tennis, Sega's Chromehounds and Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2. Every single one of these titles has sold over 100,000 copies and that's without any major media push, and on a small userbase. In comparison Katamari Damacy, which received A LOT of attention in many publications, sold in this ballpark. Chromehounds is especially encouraging since it's a very hardcore game and was reviewed very harshly among critics, and despite all of that passed the 100K mark in its first month. These kinds of numbers tell publishers that releasing a game on the 360 isn't as risky of a venture, as say compared to the original Xbox where many unique and original games could not find an audience (Psychonauts, Advent Rising). And with a game like Dead Rising, who would have known that it'd be such a success? Maybe Dead Rising was niche, but due to very effective use of the Marketplace launched the game's status to the next level of consumer acceptance.
Concluding Thoughts
The Console Ecosystem
The general activity surrounding a system is I refer to as the ecosystem of a console. This activity is what keeps you interested, keeps your attention on the console, and keeps you spending time and money on it. The Playstation consoles had fantastic ecosystems purely by the strength of their numbers. There was just so many games being released for the systems that you could walk into the store at any time and find great new games that were just released. Or maybe some old favourites that you never got around to picking up just went Greatest Hits letting you get them on the cheap. Microsoft has given the 360 a very healthy ecosystem as there's always something going on with the 360. Whether it's new retail releases, arcade releases, updates, content, or demos, there's always something new when you turn on your console.
In general in North America the potential revenue on a game is substantially higher on the 360 than the PS3. And the costs of developing a PS3 title are also higher than the 360. Therefore it makes complete economic sense for almost every single next-gen game to be released on the 360. This creates a virtuous cycle where gamers go where the games are, and the games go where the gamers are.
A healthy ecosystem is integral to the success of a console. The N64, Saturn and even the Gamecube and Xbox to a certain extent didn't have healthy ecosystems and suffered greatly as a result. The PS2 has the greatest ecosystem ever, and it's doubtful that any console will reach that level again in the foreseeable future. Right now it's looking like the 360 will have the best ecosystem out of all 3 new consoles, and as a result will achieve the number one position in North America.
Addendum: History
No manufacturer has been number one in the console space for more than 2 generations in a row. We've seen it happen a couple of times now with Atari and Nintendo. Two data points is usually too low of a number to extract any kind of reasonable prediction off of, but it's an interesting statistic, and if Sony does take a tumble, it'll start getting to the level of the EA curse.
Some people would like to point to another history lesson of the Dreamcast. What's relevant about that situation is how perfectly Sony executed with the Playstation 2. They released hardware that was at the perfect technological level for the time, contained the right capabilities, had the right games, all for an affordable price. Sony is not doing this with the PS3. It's too expensive, doesn't have the game advantage, and is trying too hard with too many capabilities.
“consumers in general don’t tend to like their electronics being all in one.”
- Bing Gordon
I'd like to point to another event in history, where a console had been out for a year, gotten quite a bit of attention and some great games. Coming into the first holiday after its launch it had a stellar lineup and faced two console launches. One of those consoles was a graphical powerhouse with many capabilities built-in, and the other was a cost-effective alternative that focused on the purity of the gaming experience. We all know how that turned out.
A Xbox 360 pode não estar a vender tão bem como se esperava mas quem a compra, compra mais jogos do que quem compra ou comprou a PS2.
!!! O meu orçamento e muito limitado e so planeio comprar o proximo em Novembro, o PES6
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(mas isso e outra conversa)... nao tenho muita paciencia para isso... tenho de levar aquilo tudo para o escritorio... enfim... 
