What would be ideal is an ISO standard for hardware with a non-profit organisation chaired alternately by various hardware developers and software publishers and overseeing the development OS and firmware, much like the way the DVD and Bluray standards are managed.
But while financial greed plays a dominant role, you can forget any kind of moves to further the industry.
@funguar Because "free" is a relative thing. You're still paying for it in the price of the console. And if the console costs the same as it would have without Kinect, you can bet your bottom dollar that something else has been sacrificed for it. Instead of having the option of leaving out Kinect, gamers would then be forced to buy it, even though they're not in the slightest bit interested.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. The costs are always recuperated somewhere.
I suppose in a year's time when the studio's deemed to be not making enough profit to feed a small country, the word on the EA Board of Management will be "fire the monkeys".
So many indie developers go in thinking that they'll never need to release a patch, so the certification fee won't be a problem. I've heard Microsoft puts in a lot of effort to encourage this line of thinking.
@immortality20 I'm assuming that you're talking about the Limbo affair. This is not business as usual. Sony does not always demand ownership of IP when releasing on Sony platforms. If they did, we wouldn't see half the minis that we have on PSN, or games like Costume Quest.
Microsoft's policy vis-Ã -vis indie studios is akin to bait and switch. They lure them in with promises of great conditions, and then slam then with huge fees for "certifying" patches.
I'm not saying Sony is any less guilty of bullying indies, but Microsoft's reputation is pretty bad in this area.
The collective industry needs to make up its mind about whether it wants good hardware or cheap hardware. Sony and Microsoft had already sold the PS3 and 360 at a loss before they managed to refine the production processes and eventually start making a profit on them, so whether they can drop the prices any further is doubtful.
You can have cheap hardware, but for that, you get the Wii - a console that was salt of the earth for about a year due to its installed user base and then fell out of favour for having low attach rates.
I do feel sorry for the 360 owners out there, but conversely, the 360 is not the console you should be owning if you want to play JRPGs. The 360 has barely made a dent in Japan, so it's no wonder that JRPG publishers are concentrating more on the more popular console in that country, and that such a decision filters down to us in the West.
I agree with what some people here are saying though - platform exclusives are starting to be a very awkward affair.
@Salta06 As someone who has worked for a developer, I don't like it, but when you're not involved in sales, you come to accept that software piracy is as inevitable as death and taxes, not only on the PC, but also on the consoles. The only console where piracy has had a limited impact so far is the PS3, but the costs of developing on the PS3 are much higher than on the other platforms, and console publishing has its own unique problems.
It's something that you strive to keep a minimum, but that you should avoid antagonising your customers in the process.
CDPR doesn't make the mistake of addressing such a delicate problem by taking a sledgehammer to it. You can't solve piracy with the threat of litigation or DRM. Such aggressive behaviour from publishers only emboldens pirates. The problem is a social one, and it's a matter of educating gamers that buying original is always better, not threatening them into submission.
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