Why Is It So Difficult To Allow Cross-Platform Play?

cookiej writes "I just got the most recent version of the Madden franchise ('10) for the PS3. Can somebody explain to me why EA has separate networks for the different platforms, only allowing players to compete with people using the same console? Back in the day, there were large discrepancies between the consoles, but these days it seems like the Xbox and the PS3 are at least near the same level. After so many releases for this franchise, they've got to have a fairly standardized protocol for networking; it seems arbitrary not to let them compete. Or am I just missing something obvious? Is it just a matter of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network not working together?"

Comments

vendor lock in

[spiffmastercow]

That was most likely the decision of MS and Sony respectively. EA is evil, but you can't blame them for everything!

Re:vendor lock in

[EdIII]

I don't think you can blame anybody. It does not make sense for those two networks to allow people to play with each other. If I was making a purchasing decision, and most of my friends were playing some game on XBL, I would be more inclined to purchase the XBOX360 to play with my friends on XBL. Now, if the the PSN and XBL were linked, I could buy the PS3 instead.

Same logic works the other way to Microsoft's advantage.

So why would either of those two companies want to make it easier to buy the competitor's product?

Re:vendor lock in

[anti-pop-frustration]

That's a bullshit excuse.
Street Fighter 4 has been released on both xbox 360 and PC. It's the same *exact* game. On PC, online play is enabled through "live - games for windows" (or whatever the hell it is called), bottom line: microsoft provides online gaming for both platforms.

Not only that, but they are explicitly trying to market their pc and xbox online services as a single, unified product... Yet, they still won't allow cross-platform play.

same as the PC

[Ambiguous Coward]

For the same reason console players can't play against PC players.

If they allowed a direct comparison between different platforms, people would realize more rapidly which is better and which is worse.

I'd love to see a match of TF2 between a bunch of console players vs. PC players. It'd be such a joke. :)

Obvious

[marcansoft]

MS and Sony (and Nintendo) want you to use their respective online frameworks. They obviously aren't compatible or interoperable (different name/nick/whatever namespaces, different friends lists, different registration procedure, etc).

You can't have cross-platform online interoperation unless EA uses an entirely custom online framework that is identical among platforms. The console manufacturers wouldn't be too happy about that, and neither would gamers (who want to register once and maintain one friends list for all games, not once for each vendor or game).

The only sane solution would require heavy cooperation between all console vendors and standardizing quite a bit of the online experience, but that's never going to happen (at least not this generation).

Re:Obvious

[Laminan]

This reminds me of the classic prisoner's dilemna and nash equilibrium. Clearly if they all cooperate they could create a common platform that would allow people to use software across their hardware platforms. But those who do not participate and get exclusive titles, would then be at an advantage. People might buy their 'one extra' console just to get those exclusive titles. It is silly, but that is a peak in the mind of a video gamepublishing exec.

Re:Obvious

[Toonol]

I disagree. The question is why doesn't EA treat its software like any other game maker who puts out a PC title.

Because it's flatly not possible for EA to do that. The console manufactures have strict guidelines about online play, and without their authorization, a game doesn't get published. It's possible for Sony, MS, and Nintendo to allow it; but it would be an unlikely exception.

Re:Obvious

[non0score]

Unless a cross-platform game company is willing to release their figures, I can't really cite a source. Even then, they can only release their numbers for the GPU (for obvious reasons).

To put this into perspective, let's just consider writing a game on the PS3 using console methodology vs. PC methodology. To begin with, you gain >50% performance just switching from PS3's OpenGL implementation to libGCM (15fps to 25fps...sad, I know). Then you consider the fact that you can carefully maintain your buffer states, early Z, double Z, special caches, etc...which is about 5~15% performance PER item (in addition to the fact that you can reinstate the buffer states). Then you consider the fact that you don't need to flush the rendering pipeline (~0.Xms per full flush), custom MSAA resolves (saves passes), hidden functions not exposed on PC hardware, texture bandwidth vs. computing power trade-offs, less worry about batched draw calls, etc.... In the end, it adds up to >50% performance loss going from hardware-specific to hardware-agnostic with an abstraction layer (DirectX or OpenGL). Put it another way: PS3 can push out about a couple million polygons per frame with all sorts of effects and stuff. You'd be hard pressed to find a PC game with a cross-hardware engine pushing out the same render quality at half the framerate.

On the other hand, the Intel CPU is way powerful and there really isn't a way for me to compare that vs. the PPC derivatives on the consoles. But trust me when I say that I've seen 1000X speedup by going from excellent C code to highly optimized ASM, which you can only feasibly get by working on a fixed hardware. However, I'm going to stop giving more details as I don't want to break NDA (everything I've said can be found on the web at very legitimate sites). If you want to know about the inner workings of the GPU (and maybe the CPU), you can always check out blogs such as Wolfgang Engel's (and remember to read comments!) or other GDC/SIGGRAPH presentations.

Re:FLOATING POINT IS NOT CROSS PLATFORM

[ShadowRangerRIT]

For the two systems mentioned (Xbox 360 and PS3), they're both using variants on the PowerPC architecture. While I can't be sure, I believe both chips use IEEE floating point numbers (outside of Crays, most chips nowadays at least have the option of using IEEE floating point), so the errors should be identical. I think the bigger problem is that the networking protocol for these games is usually licensed from the console maker, using the console maker's servers for matchmaking and the like, and it's considered to be less of a hassle to program against two different APIs than it is to write a single network protocol from scratch and maintain the servers required to support it.

Re:I'm thinking.,..

[Toonol]

No. The different consoles have different requirements for online play, and they aren't necessarily compatible. XBox live requires play through MS's servers and a live account. Sony requires companies to host their own. Nintendo has friend code requirements. It's not nearly as simple as the summary makes out.

Re:I'm thinking.,..

[BigDXLT]

The point is, it should be simple, but it's been made difficult for asinine reasons.

Re:OT: who to blame for economic woes (vendor lock

[mrsteele]

Seriously? Fucking insightful? I hate seeing this same meme bandied about.

There were multiple actions by the government that worked together with a firm belief that housing prices would continue to rise to cause this situation. Deregulation by one party. Broadening lending standards by another. Bankers who found ways to make money that while not illegal, required a firm willful ignorance of potential future calamity.

No one group is responsible for this, and to try and claim otherwise shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation.