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Sony Talks PS3 E-Distribution Initiative
simoniker writes "Talking about its PlayStation 3 E-Distribution Initiative, the company's intended Xbox Live Arcade 'killer', SCEA's John Hight has laid down a challenge to Microsoft, commenting that: 'Some of our [digitally distributed first-party] games, by virtue of their design and hardware demands, simply couldn't work on Xbox 360.'" More from the article: "The PlayStation Beyond submission site has been online since GDC 2006, when Sony's Phil Harrison announced its presence, and explains further of the concept: 'The E-Distribution Initiative (EDI) will provide an alternative publishing opportunity for the direct download of games and other content to the user. The EDI will be managed by Sony Computer Entertainment's development and studio organizations in North America, Europe, Japan and Asia (collectively known as SCE Worldwide Studios).'"
Many may question why they would care to Distribute first party games through electronic means after going through the trouble of implimenting Blue Ray for 'increased space for better, more involved games that you could get on other formats.' Some may even question pledging support for E-distro of these games with the sizes of harddrives their offering. Well I for one do not question them, it makes perfect sense from the point of view of historic trends and buisness. Unfortunatly for us, the reasoning is pure evil.
About the time of the 32-bit battles, an old trend began resurfacing in a new form; Forced Competition Development Denial (FCDD.) FCDD was easiest illustrated by Nintendo's NES. They choked off development for other consoles (namely the Sega Master System) by forcing developers to choose; in this case by having them sign contracts preventing them. That was killed in the courts and for the 16-bit console wars, FCDD didn't happen; the only denial of competition was from sales, loyalty, and popularity (oh, and who bring the $$.) From that, you had relativly similar cross platform offering and much less exclusivity.
In the lastest Generations, however, FCDD has resurfaced in a more diabolical, more legal form. By creating hardware and formats incompatible with their competition (as in Sega Saturns multiprocessor setup, 64's cartrige format) forcing developers to strech their resources to support them all. It is in the developer's best (buisness) interest to develope a game for as many platforms as its resources will allow without impacting the game's quality in a way that it will hurt overall sales. As new competition enters the console game, the developers are already becoming streched naturally. The FCDD tactic takes this further by increasing the resources the developer must devote to developing for a particular system; stealing those resources from other consoles and hopefully costing the developer to drop support for a competitor. In this generation FCDD is hitting a high mark, especially between Sony and Nintendo (Microsoft is guilty too, they just hide it well.) Nintendo's controller will require a different devotion of resources, namely creative input, to 'port' games successfully without disappointing. Sony has an unholy FCDD armament in the form of their Cell processor. This octopus of a processor is built in such a devious way that multi-threading in their programming is almost impossible to avoid; complicating the development process.
E-Distro is a huge next step. Not only is it on their format tailored for their hardware, Sony manages to monopolize the entire game development by forcing the developer to integrate Sony into every level of the game; it would become a nightmare for developers to to go cross platform (especially if they are targeting indy and small time developers, who have notoriously small budgets.) Don't expect games released by E-distro on Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft to be appearing on any where else. And that, unfortunatly, is the point.
On another note, FCDD is a risky tactic for any developer. Increasing resource costs can also force developers to reconsider developing for the FCDD console itself. FCDD practictioners need to put more reliance on brand popularity (which Sony seems to rely a lot on) and really sell the FCDD hardware as "superior choices" if it's going to really win those ever important developer games. Jaguar and Saturn are two good examples of consoles that (inpart) failed because of a backfire of their FCDD tactic. Don't let Sony's focus on 'first party games' in the article fool you, this is all about the 3rd party developers; lower distribution costs for their own titles is just a happy bonus.
Demented But Determined.