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EA Calls for Open Platform/Single Console for Games
eldavojohn writes "EA's head of international publishing made some interesting comments on what he'd like to see in the future of gaming. 'We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible.' While the rest of his comments imply that he simply meant 'one' platform instead of removing development licenses, it is an interesting concept. This is obviously a move designed to cut their development time and costs. But could this have other implications - like easier homebrew development for consoles?"
I want a unicorn. I bet I get my wish before you get yours, EA.
Remember the 3DO?
Sounds great! And then we can license the platform to other companies to produce lots of different versions of this console... and it can be produced by some a EA director seeing as they're pushing the idea, and we can call it the 3D-------oh wait
This is the only way I see that happening, I read in a xbox hacking book that the Sega Dreamcast died when they could pirate games for that system. My best bet would be making a really good tv out card driver and then making console like games for the Linux PC and making sure a really good controller has support.
To see a few of my Android apps goto: www.hartwired.com
Dear EA,
Make your own, and publish games exclusively for it. Let us know how well that works out for you.
Thanks.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Yes, I'm sure they do, I'm sure they do.
I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
"But could this have other implications - like easier homebrew development for consoles?" I am pretty sure that is NOT what EA is looking for. I am pretty sure they enjoy the high cost of entry that the console market provides. If they had any sack, they would develop their own X-Box like system and develop to that. I think that they have enough licenses in the sports arena alone to drive sales. Hell find a partner, negotiate an exclusive agreement and go.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
Short form: homogeneous consoles => fewer console sales => less money
EA's hoping that the console turns into too much of a gaming appliance, which isn't going to happen. The economics behind it are just plain shot when you take a number of products that have their unique differences, such as platform-specific games and platform-specific controllers, and attempt to homogenize them into a group that has limited differences. The asymmetric competition between the consoles is the reason why sales are quite as high as they are, since a consumer may end up purchasing a Wii and an XBox 360 if they want to play Game X and Game Y, rather than being able to purchase a generic console that will play both games and take both the wireless pad and the nunchuck.
A standard set of requirements isn't going to happen either. While Sony and Nintendo are happy to work with OpenGL, for example, it'll be a very cold day before you see Microsoft embracing modern OpenGL support alongside their DirectX baby. Each console manufacturer wants to have a share of the market based on what their console can do that others can't -- see the Wii. Some are going to go after the newest technology and play Blu-rays, others are going to have DVD remotes, some will include hard drives. The console manufacturers will not see any particular utility in adding "allows competitors to play 'our' games" to the list of requirements.
Emulation may happen, by comparison, in one fashion or another. However, the above still applies, since any game that can be run using a standard engine can also be run by their competitors.
Devs would love the idea, I'll wager. Learn the technology once and keep developing for the same, iteratively improving target. They'd love it up until the publishers stop getting paid for platform-exclusive releases.
Someone in accounting realized they could increase their profit margin if they didn't have to pay 3 teams of developers.
Rumours that this same accountant found that the sweet spot of sales was 850 copies at $77.10 each have, as yet, been unconfirmed.
It's called the PC.
OK, so there's a certain amount of variation in the hardware configuration.
Personally I think consoles mostly suck for playing games on. The controller is a crappy input device and the television is a crappy output device. The reason they're such a hit with the public is that they're 0.5 to 0.1 times the price of a PC, and the reason for THAT is -- aha -- they're not open-standard.
I piss off bigots.
One: the console fanboys will have nothing to argue about. Wait, scratch that. We'd probably have posts about how UniConsole's red scheme is outselling the white scheme, but behind the jet black scheme followed. This would be followed by pages of overwrought analysis, flame wars, and someone posting goatse before the thread lock :p
Two: EA believes that in THE FUTURE, gamers might play on Nintendo "channels" and Sony "channels" through some universal console. Doubtful, but I hope virtual console offerings are expanded across the board. Digital distribution is relatively cheap and EA, Nintendo, etc. could sell games for years or even decades after release. Maybe a Steam-like system that allows me to transfer games from console to console with guaranteed compatibility?
As it stands, there are hundreds of games that are effectively lost to time for no good reason. Consoles come and go, games stop being manufactured, and eager players either have to buy rehashes (and the required hardware), expensive used copies, or resort to emulation (which doesn't always work, especially with PS1 games). With digital distribution there's no reason why classic games, which aren't inherently scarce, have to be so difficult to find. Plus digital distribution will help bankrupt the assholes at Gamestop...assuming Comcast doesn't throttle your game downloads!
... they want their console back.
sure, dude. I'm sure we can all agree on using linux and programming everything with ncurses. right, guys?
I wonder what happened to Infinium? It tried to do this.
just make a dvd/cd that can be used in any compute//console
have it cache data files to a harddrive if possible
done!
back in the day we didnt have no old school
One console means less negotations about buying out the company.
Also, somewhere, Steve Ballmer throws a chair.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
Either the "open standard" will be extremely flexible, in which case you'll have all the problems you have with PC gaming, what with random problems with devices and confusing requirements, that drives people to consoles in the first place, or the "open standard" will be inflexible, in which case, forget expecting any innovative features like the Wiimote.
The cake is a pie
Of course you do, your business is selling entertainment (including console) software.
OTOH, the people whose business is selling development licenses to entertainment software platforms (that is, console makers) don't want that, and you whining and stomping your feet about it isn't going to get them to change as long as you keep helping them out by making software for their consoles. And if you stop making software for their consoles, well, you'll cut off your own major source of income, and probably not change their behavior at all.
The three top-end games consoles currently run PowerPC processors - a change from the last generation where it was x86, PPC and MIPS.
The two major games consoles run MIPS and ARM. But there's no good reason for that other than simple wealth of development talent for those two processors - Gameboy has always run ARM (since moving away from the 6502 in the Gameboy Advance) and Playstation ran MIPS so the PSP runs MIPS. It is always a wrestle to get your entire development community to switch processors. No games console developer wants to do an "Apple to Intel switch" every 3 years and the mindshare problems with it.
PowerPC might be the answer for the CPU - a standard, long-lived architecture which is only going to be going places. Along with a graphics card standard they can all rely on, not necessarily all ATI or all nVidia, but a unified API on top - OpenGL 3.0 (upcoming) and the other OpenML, OpenVG, and so on for accelerating graphics.
The onus on each major console developer would be to produce consoles which fit this format, and they can add and subtract features as they see fit. A differentiator may be the media format for the console - after all, you need some unique features in order to keep the things marketable. If the PS3, XBox and Wii all run a PPC and all have OpenGL-capable graphics chips, isn't the only difference here the media capability - DVD, Blu-Ray, and Gamecube/Matsushita discs? The game development community could then concentrate on something really simple, and the same development costs as a PC game can be entertained. Not the difference between "my console is completely wired up differently and has a wildly different architecture" but the difference between "some people have dual-core chips and some people don't" and "I can use Vertex Shader 3.0 but some people only have Vertex Shader 2.0".
The same game works, but people get to keep their platform loyalty, perhaps buying a Wii-classed console for the kids (so they can play lower graphics-quality games on 14" analog TVs with mono speakers) while the parents have a PS3 downstairs (on the main 42" digital HD plasma TV with the 7.1 THX sound system). The media format matters less if games move into the downloads territory - after all, a game like Half-Life 2 can be played when only 60% of it is on your hard disk (even less, but I think Steam is overzealous). You don't need to download the later levels until you get close to them, after all. Downloading a 7GB file set on an average cable connection would only take a few days anyway..
How about this; you buy a games console. You buy games as "predownload kits" and go online to authorize playing, locked to the console as most XBox Live accounts and Wii Friend Codes etc are now. The DVD is just so you can start playing right away, but the main executable, maybe some first-level data files and obvious extra add-ons are installed as you authorize to stop people pirating games. After all, if you could not play the game without a code key and the special executable and data files and unlock code, piracy is moot; copying game DVDs becomes a useful strategy to get the games to your friends, rather than stealing.
Yeah right. EA doesn't care about open platforms. All they care about is the latter part of the thread's subject: single console.
Linux has been available for a long time, large games (e.g. Unreal, Doom, Wolfenstein, formerly America's Army) have been available for it for quite some time. And yet they havn't ported shit over.
First of all, I assume the Personal Computer does not count, because a console only has one hardware configuration (but that is what the operating system is for). The standardized game console they talk about wouldn't turn out to be too different then the PC, I can imagine, not evolving much except in minimum requirements.
Innovative features would go away. I shouldn't have to cite examples, but I know Nintendo has been on the innovative path, you would have never seen a pointer in a game controller or a touch screen on a portable, it would be the standard controller and buttons galore, not much else.
Having multiple consoles allows us the power of choice. Standards do not drive the console industry, competition does.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Isn't a single, easy to develop for console exactly what the XBox was created to be?
Why suffer through a train wreck like the PS3, when you have Microsoft designing their consoles around what developers are asking for?
A common platform for console games really only benefits companies the size of EA, and to a lesser extent, 3rd party multi platform publishers of any size. It would cut down on development costs.
However, there is no way that this will happen, at least not voluntarily. Doing this would effectively kill all but one of the platform manufacturers. Nintendo is not likely to do this. Too much history, and institutional pride. Also, even when they do not excel or lead the market, they are always profitable. Why share the golden goose?
Sony would probably not go for this either, despite the current difficulties with the PS3. The last time they tried to collaborate with another console manufacturer, they got burned by Nintendo. And they did do pretty damn good with the PS1 and PS2. And finally, assuming they do not self destruct from bleeding money and need to spin off or shutter their game development, they are playing for the long term. The PS3 is a good strategy to push Bluray along, and I have no doubt that it will work out for that if nothing else.
Microsoft may go for this. They are primarily a software house. If EA's plan did come about, I would bet that the side that works with Microsoft would dominate. Game developers just love their development tools. Having worked with Wii, Xbox360, and PS3 dev hardware, I can say that Microsoft's dev gear is the best.
Still, I just do not see this happening. Unless EA decides to boot strap the damn thing into existence, it will just not happen.
END COMMUNICATION
From the point of view of development cost, the value of a standard platform is proportional to how long it remains the standard to develop for. On the other hand, from a hard-core gamer's perspective, the value is inversely proportional to its longevity since no significant hardware advances will occur until a new platform is developed.
a single open platform will kill the technology. competition is the reason technology advances. if there is no need to better the other guy, there is no need to rush to create better technology than them.
portfolio
"I read in a xbox hacking book that the Sega Dreamcast died when they could pirate games for that system"
No, not really. The Dreamcast died when Sega was in it's last days as a hardware vendor. They could or would not properly advertise or support the system. Plus, once the rumors were out that the Dreamcast was dead, it was for all practical purposes dead. Rumors are like that in the gaming industry. Pirating was not a large phenomenon until after it was pretty clear the Dreamcast was dead.
In my opinion, the Dreamcast began to die the day that Sony ran it's successful campaign that convinced people the PS2 was the future of gaming not the Dreamcast. Sega did nothing to counter that feeling, either, because after the wildly successful 9/9/99 launch, they basically did very little to push the console.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
... jesus christ. What EA should maybe do is make deals with PC companies and create a PC platform specifically for games, and share the costs of hardware development and deployment all around... good luck on that though!
You don't need one console. You need one target platform. You have have 5 different consoles, or 50, and still write to a single common platform. It's called middleware. The middleware vendor figures out all the idiosynchracies of the different consoles, and then writes an API which sits above it. The game developer (EA or whoever) pays a license to the middleware developer, and then writes to the middleare API, and things more or less work like magic on all the different consoles. All you have to do to 'port' it to a new console, or the PC, is really deal with the input issues. A Wii is not the same as an XBox360, but when a friend of mine did the port of "Cars" to the Wii, it was really just a matter of revising the input routines, and some other tweaking.
It will happen, just not soon (unless EA dumps a serious amount of money into it).
Not a single hardware platform, but a standard open format that games can be written in. Similar to how you can view the same web-pages on Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, XBox, etc.
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
spaceMeat? Some of us live in lelitt anendi erseunivs you nsitinseive clod!
I would expect that any common platform would be an evolution toward a common denominator or least common denominator. The opportunity to select a platform based upon performance characteristics or specialized capabilities would me moot. (Wii controllers, HD support, # of processors) Of course, I am sure (giggle) that EA would pass some of the development savings onto consumers! Perhaps $59.95 games would now retail for $58.49. Let the market choose how many and how differentiated the available platforms should be.
It's called the PC.
Good talk.
With your 1080p on a 56" TV, each pixel is about the size of a baseball, and if it's a normal TV your frame rate is a truly pukeworthy 30 FPS no matter what the game may be doing. From six feet away your field of view is what, about 30-40 degrees? Normal human vision is capable of about 120.
A 24-inch 1080p monitor 18 inches away looks reasonably decent and starts to give you a little peripheral vision. It also does 100-120 Hz.
Neither of these come close to the printed page at 1200 DPI and no flicker at all, of course.
What you have is a Bubba-impressing burglar-magnet.
EA should feel welcome to take it's anual franchise games and develop them on the phantom. I'll be over here, playing Tabula Rasa, Bioshock, Portal, etc.
At the end of the day, what EA wants is unimportant compared to what the gamers want. You will never reach a wide audience with a "1 size fits all" console, because 1 size never fits all.
Wii is great for the family market and seems to be helping to bring wives and girlfriends into the gaming lifestyle in a way that's never been seen before.
Xbox 360 and Live are doing exactly what they were made to do.
PC is still the platform of choice for the hardcore shooter, stratergy and MMO market.
The PS3 is doing ummm... Somthing... Oh yeah, virtual house decoration and streaming media to their handheld, for those people that want a "gaming lifestyle" without the actual games part.
If you wanted to try and capture all of the above then your product would most likely be £1000 per unit over cost, and 3 years behind schedual.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
If this one "open" platform is controlled by Sony, Micro$oft, Nintendo, etc or any organization one of them can monopolize... no thanks.
Haiku for you!
Am I the only one who thinks they may be talking about a software platform, like a Universal SDK, rather than a single console?
A Platform is anything that your code runs on. Yes, the PC is a platform, for Windows and linux (among other things). Windows is, in turn, a platform for applications. A JVM is an application whose platform is some OS that is itself a platform for Java applications.
If there were some SDK which could, for example, introduce the concept of a "job" that managed some aspect of a game, like AI or audio, the libraries for the PS3 could dispatch that job to a SPE, while the same application code on the Xbox360 could create just another thread running on one of the PPCs. While on the Wii, the library would return null because there wasn't enough hardware resources to handle another job. I kid.
But seriously, "Platform" does not necessarily mean "hardware".
And I'm still calling for a gold-plated toilet, but that just ain't in the cards.
/* No Comment */
More seriously though, a fixed platform isn't necessarily a bad thing. Someone has pointed out that competition drives technological advancement. I would contest that demand also drives it, and if the console owners don't demand more, the content developers *will*.
As for the advantages of having a single platform, they remain the same as with the various consoles when seen individually: A console is a fixed set of hardware with a fixed software platform, for which a developer can create. That fixed platform allows the developers to be 100% sure that the end user can run the game. When the developers hit a wall in how much the console can do, they'll start clammering for the console developers to make a new, better model. The developers also reap a benefit in development costs, since they don't have to develop for multiple platforms.
It's also consumer friendly. I would much rather have 1 console which runs everything, than have to buy 3 consoles just to ensure I get the full range of games being developed.
As for the open-ness of the platform, we should strive to make sure it isn't *too* open. A game shouldn't modify the platform, and games being released at retail *should* be certified, but as long as the certification process is relatively cheap, I don't see that being an issue.
If we had a single console, people would make "mistakes" putting it together, and you'd occasionally have to swap to another model to play a game not supported on yours. (Sega CD BIOS and Lunar for an example of what can happen) Given MS and Java, I wouldn't want them designing one of these.
3 companies currently have a taste for the money involved with being the console provider. Which is going to willingly give it up? Whether your game rocks or tanks, you pay them for the privledge of releasing it for their console. With one console, prices would skyrocket. As it is, the greed of individual companies is somewhat countered by the fear of driving a hit to the competition. This is part of why Sony WON'T back down from Blu-Ray. Forgetting the players, owning the standard is fairly profitable. (And a powerful tool negotiation-wise, at least until it's so broken with DRM that consumers CAN'T use it and give up.)
Also, would you want Nintendo owning it, perhaps making all the games for 6 months nearly unplayable from insisting they rely on the latest gimmick? Would you like Sony to control everything, blocking series you like (Working Designs, 2D games for a while when trying to push 3D), making nasty decisions (DRM breaking consoles, going ahead with the only plays on one console game-disc).
If a system like this was incrementally upgraded like PCs, it would have the standard PC problem of inconsistent play between consoles. Remember popping DOS games on Win95-98 class PCs and watching the on-screen blur? Even little timing mismatches could be nasty for twitch games.
Competition as some have noted above means companies will take more chances on off-beat games, always a plus. Staggered releases also force a bit more exposure for well-timed games. Most anything around the release of a new console will get tried. It may be crap, but an early game will get plenty of sales form parents who don't know better just because it's there, and their kid doesn't already have it. While it pushes crap, it also pushes potentially good games that might have gone unnoticed otherwise.
We need multiple consoles to keep the console fanboys arguing. A generic system is quickly forgotten about. When's the last time you argued about which brand of TV or DVD player was best? HDTV type perhaps (lcd, plasma...) How about sound systems? Your friends might have a few compliments for your new system, but it's for most, too generic to pay much attention too. The debate over what's best keeps the buzz going, and the systems fresh in people's minds.
Please stop bitching about missing the boat with the Wii, and work on the console. Thats what this announcement was really about. One platform wouldn't involve them watching Nintendo from the sidelines as they make money hand over fist one cheaper to develop games. Even after all of that, they are again trying to say the 360, or PS3 will dominate, yet the numbers sure as hell say otherwise.
At least in the mobile market there is an open platform where everyone can participate
http://www.gp2x.com/
One way for EA's vision of one console to come to fruition would be for one console maker to establish a monopoly-esque dominant position. Once one console has 90%+ of the market, the other console makers have three choices: 1) Jump on the bandwagon to make a better version of that platform - thus establishing the standard 2) Join forces to make a united platform console that developers and consumers like better than the monopoly console 3) roll over and die.
... ok 4) They could sue - monopolies always put enough blood in the water to attract lawyers.
...or you can imagine a situation where console still contain very weird innovations, but still provide a simple common layer.
...) but all have Java MIDP which can be targeted as a standard unified platform, it doesn't provide all the niceties of native binary but is the kind of "one target to rule them all" that developer are looking for.
Games are either manufacturer-exclusive and exploit all special bells-and-whistles (original new controller, clever usage of the steam coprocessors or whatever) or games target a special set of API and hardware capabilities that exist across all major player.
The concept is somewhat similar to what currently happens with some developing toolset that let developers cross compile software for several consoles (id software's next engine which works on PC, XBox 360 and Playstation with one single toolset is such an example).
The only difference is that current such tools are done by 3rd party, have to be acquired separately, and finally produce console-specific disc wich bundles game data with console-specific runtime layer, whereas EA's idea could be implemented if every console offered in it's firmware a "standarised environment".
It could be something similar to what smart phones (and to some extend, the interactive capabilities of high definition disc players are doing) are already doing : most of them have different and specific hardware and OS platform (Symbian, Linux, Windows CE, Palm OS,
In the console realm, an open-source stack based around Linux + SDL + OpenGL + some scripting language (like python's pygame. Or better Parrot Bytecode engine for more language flexibility) could provide such a unified target. Specially since some console already have linux (PS3, PS2) and other are getting it hacked in (Wii) or have already had (Xbox 360, DS, PSP (somewhat. An uCLinux proof-of-concept currently),XBox, GameCube, Dreamcast... )
Actually, in contrary of what they think, allowing linux on the consoles could somewhat drive piracy down. Currently both pirated games, linux and homebrew all share the same need to circumvent the cryptographic locks that exist inside consoles (either to crack the games, or just to be able to run their own non-signed code). So efforts are shared among all those groups.
If Linux gets an official support from companies, the linux community won't need modchips and such anymore, and in addition to commercial game developers looking for a standard platform, homebrewer will get a platform they can target too, without needing to circumvent cryptography. Thus less efforts go into the development of methods to circumvent the cryptographic lock around vendor specific platform for games.
The only draw back is that cross-platform developers targeting Linux for commercial games won't benefit any more from the copy protection provided by the cryptographic locks and will have to either invent other protections that will work on this standard platform (cue in StarFuck and all associated problems), count on log-ins for on-line games or accept risk and take into account the possibility of being easily copied.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
We have this. It is called Java. And the performance just screams.
http://www.java.com/en/games/
It is Java http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language) , so by design it will work on any modern console. My Wii w/Opera and Java, my Mac, my Vista box, or my Suse box.
Personally, I like the Flash ones better;
http://www.addictinggames.com/whackyourex.html
(Note, sarcasm implied)
Love it or hate it, that's undeniably the single biggest thing Windows has going for it. Microsoft dominates because Microsoft dominates.
It's already on the market, and most game producers are already developing on that platform. They're called PCs. PCs are cheap, and are -everywhere-. There are more PCs that are 2-years old or younger than all of the game systems that have ever been produced combined. The 'standard' PC architecture is constantly climbing in its capabilities, so any PC game produced today, even if it requires 'top-of-the-line' hardware will be usable by most PC owners within a year or maybe two, and again, we're talking about many, many times more prospective costomers than owners of games consoles. Oh yeah, and games produced for the PC today will work on most PCs that are produced two years from now. You can't say that about game consoles. All they have to do is produce GOOD products, and people buy them. (Blizzard is grossing over $1Billion/year right now. Yes, that's Billion, and that's only for WoW.)
Not the whole console. Not as in "Java bytecode interpreter".
I suggest that all consoles should, among other, export a standard bytecode or script interpreter and standard 3D API, as a target for homebrew and indie developper.
Something that could be easily targeted whatever the console is.
Bytecode or some other script language have a couple of benefits :
- Not dependent on Processor ISA : this generation happens to use PowerPC and derivative. But it wasn't the case of last generation and it's not sure about next generation. With a bytecode interpreter or some scripting language like Python, you can run the same program whatever the actual processor is. Or run some setup startup script witch could subsequently load processor specific binaries and libraries if needed.
- What tales up most of the processing power in a games are the graphics and other multimedia stuff. If your console provides in its firmware native binaries for stuff like SDL, OpenGL, OpenAL, auxiliary stuff like libzip, libjpeg, etc. maybe even some scene library or some physics library, and corresponding bindings to the bytecode VM or scripting language (like PyGames, Perl::SDL, etc.) most of the hardwork will be handled in the native libraries.
Several Linux games have proved that you can actually develop decent games in Perl and Python, as long as the intensive part is taken care of in native libraries.
(Even in commercial games like most recent from id software, a huge part of the game is ran inside a VM)
- As an extreme example there are a lot of quite well done Flash games. And flash only provide a fraction of what libraries' binding I suggest should be available on a byte code console subsystem (Flash doesn't provide accelerated 3D, nor 3d audio, etc.)
- Such system would be used for small (in term of complexity) games anyway : like puzzle games, adventure games, 2D platformer, dating sims, 2D strategy, rythme games, etc. (the kind where you have 2D or stylised 3D cute graphics).
Huge multimedia productions (like halo 3) that show of the console need to be hardware specific anyway in order to push the platform to its limits, and thus are not going to be cross platform anyway, so I'm not even considering this in my linux/SDL/opengl common cross platform target.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You can't even make one that will work in every computer without periodically updating the disc.
Game consoles do this by storing updates on the hard drive. But at that point, why not just boot an OS off the hard drive to manage it?
In short... not gonna work, even on a PC, let alone consoles. I could rant for quite awhile on why it won't work, and why it'd be a bad idea even if it would, but for now, the fact that you've even suggested the idea tells me you haven't seriously thought it through. So do the research, or take my word for it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Even just OpenGL on Windows, they could do without paying a licensing fee. (Not sure what's needed for DirectX.)
And there are plenty of open source libs, even engines, some BSD-licensed, which could give you a "platform" that is a compile away from any desktop OS.
So why do they use DirectX on Windows, and consoles? (Hell, I seem to remember EA embeds IE on Windows.)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Developers, yes. Middleware means you can and will have ports to all consoles.
But users still have the choice between the Xbox 360 for its exclusives, the PS3 for its raw power (unless the 360 is enough), or the Wii for the Wiimote. And once they have one of these, they lose all the benefits of any of the others. Were they to switch, they'd still have games that only work on one.
So, simplest example: Say you buy an Xbox 360 and a Wii, which seems the sanest choice (vs a PS3, which might still cost as much as both). Now, when you see a new game that's out for both, do you buy it for the 360 (superior graphics), or the Wii (cool controls)? Even if you bought both, which do you play, since you can't port savegames?
Why should you have to choose?
Had consoles died, say, five years ago, the Wiimote might exist anyway, but it'd be a PC peripheral. That would mean you could develop a game that'd be both -- it would demand the very highest performance, and a Wiimote. Or you could ship exactly the same game, and have it use a Wiimote if available, and a mouse if not.
I'm not saying I want consoles to die, but I am saying that it's not enough to have a single software target for developers -- for it to be effective, this must also be a single target for consumers. The PC is close, but consoles are too much cheaper, and Windows just makes this suck.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I believe that's called a computer.
Isn't this exactly the role middleware fills?
If you want a common engine that will run on multiple platforms, then go to a company who's business model is, well, making a common engine that will run on multiple platforms.
Granted EA would probably be happier if the entire industry just changed to suit them rather then paying a license to some other company for something they want.
As long as there are platforms with highly unique capabilities; there will be no common API. How could one create a WiiMote if the Wii had to execute a common platform?
I predict that the common platform will only be viable for games that are using minimal hardware. An example are Flash games that run in the browser, yet really aren't very technically advanced.
No, I will not work for your startup
But the PC is the closest thing we're going to get for a 'standard' machine where everyone can meet.
There was also TAOS released in 1992 by the Tao Group which advocated an OS that was based on a Virtual Machine, with emulators for this virtual processor available for a plethora of platforms including the 680x0, x86, ARM, MIPS (for Sony's PS1) and Inmos transputers.
Further reading here
Another interesting take on this idea was the Nuon from VM Labs who developed a games machine on a chip that could be added to DVD players. Around eight Nuon DVD decks were released but only Jeff Minter's Tempest 3000 and the VLM-2 lightsynth were ever released along with a handful of Nuon enhanced DVD titles. (Both these titles migrated to the xbox360)
The Evil Assholes aren't very smart if they think there will ever be a time where there is no competition in the gaming hardware market. But we already knew they weren't smart. What they are is greedy, uncreative, slave-driving, hope-destroying Evil Assholes who want to buy all game companies until they are the only one, and have only one console, and eventually even just one game (Madden). EA should die, they are a pestilence and a plague upon us all.
"EA wants 'open gaming platform'" Yeah, it's called a PC.