In an ironic display of irony, the better the hardware the longer it takes to make a game.
Handhelds don’t generally fall into this category yet. While the PSP and DS with their more advanced hardware might befuddle developers a bit more than before, titles are generally easy to make since they are usually based on something that has been done before; the PSP is not a complete departure from PlayStation 2 architecture. But the next generation of “so big I can hump your DVD player” consoles are a whole new set of rules and just as with the PS2 analysts are speculating whether the transition will be smoother or tougher than before, because this inevitably causes a slump for sales in the market as people hold off for the new games and new hardware.
Well, hardware sales, at least. What I don’t understand is why software sales seem to plummet. Or do they? Fact is, no-one is being specific on this point. Will the software numbers drop just because of a new console? If it does, you have to wonder if we should lament backwards-compatibility as a moot feature... There is one aspect that does tend to slow software sales during this period: everyone is trying to make next generation games. Now these titles sold at the beginning of a console’s lifespan barely make the grade when compared to their lesser competing titles. Yes, they do look a lot prettier, but they have to, else all that valuable R&D time would have gone for a waste. Alas everything else of these titles tend to be stock-standard or even sub-standard, since the developers were more focused on releasing a next generation title than making a title that would suit the next generation.
This begs another question – in no time the titles for the current generation eek away into nothing, with a few small options here and there, especially in the realm of Triple-A games. We weren’t exactly flooded with choice for the PlayStation soon into the PS2’s lifespan and the Dreamcast died a rather quick death, despite Sega’s promises of more titles being developed for it. You can speculate that the people want nicer games to run on their new consoles, but I think the publishers, developers and hardware manufacturers are more to blame here – they are just following market sentiment (one I suspect are set more by retailers and hype-gurus than actual consumers). Judging by how impressive titles such as Jak 3 look on the ageing PS2, it’s clear that neither the Xbox nor the Gamecube are anywhere close to their shelving dates.
But perhaps that’s the award for being the oldest console: your owners actually get to see your true potential. Everyone else, though, are going to be handed a ‘thanks for playing’ note and urged to go onto the successor, because when Xenon or Revolution hit the streets, developers are really not going to be that interested in making games for the older platforms – another stark bit of irony when you consider how everyone is complaining about the price of Next Gen development. By my calculation there are millions of people (I counted) who own Gamecubes and Xboxes and I’m sure a lot of them would hold off on owning the next great thing from these companies if quality games were still being pushed into the channel. Sadly, bigger and brighter is nicer – even if it is to the detriment of the industry – and we’re going to send these machines off to the gaming fields in the sky pretty soon.
All of that begs another question: if the Xbox 2 is going to be released first, will it be the turn of Sony owners to get shortchanged come 2009 or 2010? With an average four to six year lifespan between console cycles, it’s not the biggest that lasts the longest but the console that launched first and became a success (just in case you felt like pointing to the Dreamcast). And what will games cost when we get to that point? Apart from middleware, all I seem to see happening are financing companies emerging and groups lobbying for government funding to help developers, so I really hope there are some clandestine activities afoot to make game development become cheaper. Think about it this way: at some point all of the costs of tumbling from one generation to the next and incurring debts, more development costs and more expensive hardware will end up on the price-tag of your favourite game box. There might even be a point when it just makes more sense not to buy the next best thing...
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