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Sony Attacks Microsoft's Publishing Policies
winston18 writes "Sony's vice president of publisher relations has gone on record as saying that Microsoft is protecting an inferior technology with their policies regarding content on Xbox Live Arcade and multiplatform titles. The comments stem from Microsoft's admission that they reserve the right to deny titles on Xbox Live if they launch on the PlayStation Network first."
Sony, who is known to pay millions towards Rockstar (with GTA series) and other developers to make PlayStation exclusives and offering them special deals, is saying Microsoft's policies are wrong when they try to fight against this old stupid shit with consoles?
I guess all the old OtherOS, PSN network hacking and other fiasco wasn't enough for Sony.
A lot of developers have been publicly complaining about Xbox Live, calling it too closed. Even Gabe Newell of Valve--who used to work at Microsoft--criticized Live for being too restrictive because Microsoft wouldn't allow Valve to use Steam. Meanwhile, Sony not only allows Steam but lets Valve offer a free copy of the PC and Mac version to buyers of the PS3 version of Portal 2.
Microsoft has ridden the success of Halo and Gears of War, and the 360 was easier to develop for when people were learning how to work with the PS3, but sales of the PS3 are surpassing the 360 this year, and PS3 developers have caught up. In addition, the poor reception to Microsoft's focus on motion gaming as well as a lack of an answer to mobile gaming signals a diminishing of the their position to third place.
I can't see this as anything other than one giant who uses customer hostile strategies to profit complaining about another giant using customer hostile strategies to accomplish the same goal. Boo hoo, poor Sony.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
They have been in the console market for ten years now and they still think they can buy/bribe/threaten their way to beating Sony and Nintendo.
Sony has some 21 first party studios.
Nintendo has about 10.
Microsoft has only 3 or so first party studios.
So Microsoft is forced to play the bribe and threaten crap with publishers since they have almost nothing in the way of exclusive games to compete with Sony and Nintendo's huge first party lineups.
No wonder they went from distant 2nd place last gen to last place this gen.
Personally I think "Exclusive" title arrangements should be illegal. But as long as developers can get a premium fee for making their work platform-exclusive, we'll have to put up with the practice.
Then again, given the shitty quality of some ports, maybe it'd be better if all developer's focused on one platform first and got it right before they tried tacking other development environments.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yeah, and then they remove features after they've sold you the hardware, and it's fatally crippled by insane DRM that treats you as if you're a suspect instead of the device's owner.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Console Gaming is on the decline anyway.
While the PS3, XBox360 and Wii are great systems on their own, Sony, Nintendo and even Microsoft are still dinosaurs of the Gaming industry.
PS3 sales have been inflated by the fact that it was the best value BluRay Player on the market for years. Now, sub-$200 BluRay Players are making the $400 PS3 look more like the niche product that it is.
While the Kinect has boosted XBox sales almost as much as the Red-Ring-Of-Death did, it is still a fad. People are using their Kinect for niche tasks like 3D-imaging rather than gaming. The Kinect was one of Make:Magazines most Hackable Gadgets, and that could a major factor in driving sales of what is still a niche product.
Wii Fit has made the Wii the "housewife's second-best-friend" of gaming consoles and has inflated sales as well. Once again, it is turning out to be just a fad. It is the most consumer-friendly gaming console of the big three, which explains it's much higher sales figures, but it is still of limited appeal to the average consumer.
While their always will be Dead-beat stoners who spend their profits from their hydroponic operation to continue buying XBox's and PS3, as well as high-pressure professionals who want some mindless downtime when they get home from work, Console gaming is not where it's at at the moment. I doubt their will be much of a Console Gaming comeback in the future either.
Sounds like sony is just sucking sour grapes. its perfectly fine when they do under the table deals to keep publishers from releasing multiplatform games sometimes up to a year later but no one else.
You lost this race sony, quit making excuses for your own doing. You have a white elephant that was more expensive than a neo-geo, took years to get your cost down, bet on blu-ray that most people dont give a shit about, took fucking forever to get games out, other OS, and the psn CC leak
yea its Microsoft's fault, and that had a what 90% failure ratio?
I'll explain the title of my post towards the end. Regarding the two digital-distribution marketplaces that Microsoft maintain, however, Microsoft are so schizophrenic with regard to how they operate both XBLA and XBLIG that it's rather stomach-churning.
The fact of the matter is that when the Xbox 360 originally came out, you would see maybe 1 to 2 titles every 1 to 2 weeks released on XBLA. XBLA was touted as the way for smaller, more "indie" development houses to develop games on the X360 platform without having to deal with all of the ins and outs of manufacturing, distribution, and more restrictive technical certification requirements that come with a disc-based game. Microsoft were highly selective over the titles that would be released on XBLA, and for good reason - they needed an online marketplace with many "strong" titles and few "weak" ones.
After so many "indie" development houses complained that they were not being allowed to market such obvious smash hits as "Try Not To Fart" or "Controller Vibrator 2000" - note the intended sarcasm - Microsoft created the XBLIG marketplace, touting that as the new place for smaller, more "indie" development houses to put games onto the X360 platform.
This went well for perhaps 6 to 12 months, with a few particularly good indie games making their way to the top of the XBLIG charts, and all of the undeserving fluff and blatant cash grabs fell to the bottom of the pile, at which point the wheels fell off. Microsoft felt the need to take things in a third direction, now choosing to "upgrade" specific XBLIG dev houses to XBLA contracts.
In doing so, they signed the death warrant for both XBLA and XBLIG. Removing the more polished indie dev houses from the XBLIG marketplace ensured that XBLIG continues to play second fiddle to XBLA, but more importantly, it means that the XBLA marketplace is now flooded with "lesser" games that would otherwise have remained on the XBLIG marketplace (and for good reason). Now, it is much more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff on the XBLA marketplace, and there is no wheat on the XBLIG marketplace.
Despite all of this, Microsoft insist that they are "top dog" regarding their digital marketplaces, to the point of taking blatant advantage over dev houses they perceive as "smaller" when those dev houses come a-knocking to try to get their games released on XBLA. In the case of Minecraft, the sad fact is that the Xbox 360 is the only console (handhelds excluded) on which it will be released, specifically because Microsoft forced Mojang into an exclusive contract. The entire matter is sickening.
They have been in the console market for ten years now and they still think they can buy/bribe/threaten their way to beating Sony and Nintendo.
Sony has some 21 first party studios.
Nintendo has about 10.
Microsoft has only 3 or so first party studios.
Woah, wait a second. Where the crap did you get that? Wikipedia says that Sony has sixteen first-party studios, Nintendo has eighteen, and Microsoft has eleven. Some of the games that are made by studios like Level-5, Next Level Games or Insomniac are actually second-party studios that are not directly owned by the companies they collaborate with (especially Level-5, who releases games pretty much everywhere).
I don't know where you did your research, but that's REALLY misleading (and a little biased towards Sony, there). Microsoft publishes quite a bit of first-party content, even though it's not as much as Sony or Nintendo (especially Nintendo, even more so if you count their HUGE list of second-party studios).
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
List of features you lose if you don't accept Sony's firmware update
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
As a former console developer I would like to know what that Sony asshat is smoking.
The SPUs, which have considerable processing power, do not make up for the rest of the crappy architecture of the PS3.
The OS is crap, the GPU is crap, the APIs are crap (except for gcm) and the security is crap. I was the guy who wrote the graphics engines and a lot of the SPU code (for the devloper I worked for) and I can tell you that the PS3 is a boat anchor for cross platform developers.
Here's an example; The SPUs seem very fast at 3.2GHz compared to the VUs from the PS2 at 300MHz. That is until you actually try to do anything like multiply a vector by a matrix. PS2 could do it in 4 cycles dispatch, and 3 additional cycles latency. So you could do vector times matrix every 4 cycles in a tight loop. PS3 needs at least 10 cycles dispatch with a total latency over 50 cycles. If you really bust your ass interleaving loops you can get down to 15 cycles or so per vertex because Sony forgot both masked writes and broadcast math in the SPU architecture. Idiots, it was there in the PS2! Where you high when you signed off on the SPU design?
I could spend hours ragging on the design of the PS3 but I'll just say Sony really dropped the ball on the PS3 design as a whole. While it stomps the 360 on total CPU power it's much easier getting the games where you want them on the 360.Why should anyone develop for the PS3 when it costs at least double for the same finished quality?
I'm glad I don't have to deal with their shit any more.
If you go and tell Target that you'll sell them something exclusively for awhile before you sell to other retailers, you may well find that Walmart, Best Buy and so on blacklist you. They don't like you trying to give a competitor an advantage so they'll say "Ok you want to go exclusive with them, you do that, but it is a permanent thing. We aren't going to let you give them a boost, and then give yourself a sales boost by using our store space."
Same shit with pricing. You generally can't give highly preferential pricing to one retailer or the others will retaliate.
Remember: It is 100% your right to determine who you do and do not wish to sell to. However it is 100% the stores' right to determine what they do and do not wish to stock. If you do something that they believe hurts them, they are within their rights to tell you to fuck off.
Similar deal here. If Sony bribes you to release your content first on PSN, ok that is their right, and your right to accept the deal. Nobody is going to say you can't. However MS is not then interested in carrying your product. They don't want you trying to boost Sony's platform by releasing there first, and then to improve your sales by going to MS's market later.
Just saying.
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