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EA Calls for Open Platform/Single Console for Games

Posted by Zonk on from the all-about-the-bottom-line dept.

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?"

5 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Dear EA by scot4875 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  2. We already have one by Hells · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's called the PC.

    1. Re:We already have one by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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!
  3. Not true by tkrotchko · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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
  4. Middleware by ShakaUVM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.