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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?"
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.
And what OS are you running? I bet it's not linux or os x since there aren't very many games out for those because they're different platforms. Yet they're still PCs.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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
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.