Support NeoGAF

[Doube D]

Seems to me like it would be common sense. Say Sony takes its top notch programmers at ND, PD… and has them design a graphics engine tailored to the ps3, and then license it for a decent price to 3rd parties to use while frequently updating the code as the engine develops further. It would be taking out two birds with one stone. Not only would the graphical disparity between large devs and small houses diminish, they would basically be forcing the devs to make the game ps3 exclusive indirectly. That is, to port it, they would have to rewrite an entire new engine from scratch.

Now obvious MS could also do this. The fact that these two consoles are so distinct would mean that an engine tailored specifically to one would be a bitch to port (not to mention that it is licensed so porting it would be illegal).

It would also help out the small guys who simply don't have the talent/time/money to develop an engine that hits these systems to the metal.

Both companies have already taken a step towards this process by incorporating things like Havok prepacked with their dev kits and "free" (so long as you purchase the dev kit of course).

 

[winter]

Ever heard of Microsoft's XNA?

 

[master_shake_05]

I'm a fan of multiconsole releases, so fuck this idea. Good day.

 

[Doube D]

Ever heard of Microsoft's XNA?

I have, and its not the same thing as what I was talking about.

XNA is a tool that lets devs develop engines, it is not an engine on to itself.

 

[Kleegamefan]

1st and 2nd party games compete with 3rd party games too...

If Nintendo has taught Microsoft and SCEI anything, is that you can make a FORTUNE on games from your 1st and 2nd party stable...so much so, that with a hit 1st/2nd party game, you can actually drive the hardware sales regardless of whatever 3rd party support you may/may not have......not to mention you can cut yourself a fairly good deal on licensing fees

As such, Nintendo (and Microsoft and Sony) games live/die on how well they compare to 3rd party games.....Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony have an advantage in that they know thier own hardware secrets intimately and can develop highly specialized in-house tools that play to these secrets...

They *have* been known to lend a helping hand to their select favorite 3rd party developers (sure to include guys with names that rhyme with lapcom, wee-hay and yo-mommy) but, of coures, they are sure to keep this years, cutting-edge software for themselves.....and this is a best case scenerio, IMO

 

[Jiggy]

Why couldn't the other developers just take the code they were given, improve upon it to get around copyright/licensing issues, and then use it to thoroughly outshine the first-party stuff?

 

[Azure Dream]

Besides, aren't Microsoft and Sony actually doing this for next-gen, at least from a baseline approach? Both give professional physics packages, and I think, I know I'm going to get this quite wrong, but there's at least a trial version of the latest UT engine for them to work from, as well. Several games are using it, such as Frame City Killers.

So they're kind of already doing it, and they do update toolsets throughout the gen to my knowledge, but it's not like they're going to hand over the sourcecode of Sly 4's engine to THQ and say, "Go nuts, create as many mascot cash-ins you want with this!"

 

[Guy LeDouche]

I think Sony lets devs use the PS2 Performance Analyzer. It really lets you know where bottlenecks are occuring in CPU/GPU processing. R* used it extensively for the ever evolving GTA3 engine.

PD used it alot between GT3 and GT4.