I'm posting info I found interesting while making my link list last month. This article corresponds to Sony and Microsoft talking about going third party, and the GDC article I will be writing later this.
Phil Spencer says he wants Epic marketplace on the XBox.
XBox Exclusives and ports
Phil Spencer speculates about exclusives actually being needed anymore. He even wants Epic on Xbox
Some publishers and designers don't feel like making games for XBOX anymore. It's an attempt to create controversy.
Phil Spencer isn't looking that good in general though
Phil Spencer may be the one that destroys Xbox.
But it's not like the guy he replaced has any better opinions.
Peter Moore doesn't think consoles should be a thing anymore. He should know, he killed the Dreamcast and led XBox. At the moment he leads Unity. The guy who looks like Satan should totally be believed.
It's not like Sony is doing any better.
Sony does not rise to the victory expected
You can own a bobblehead of Jim Ryan, the boss at PlayStation
PS5 was the top seller in February, but that's after console sale shrinkage. Helldiver's 2 is the best selling game.
Meanwhile Nintendo is getting more games for the Switch. Even old Rare games are showing up on the console. In a Nintendo Direct they announced even more
_ND: Rare
Rare Software games are being released for the SNES, Nintendo, and N64 apps on Switch. I hope Donkey Kong 64, Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark get released soon. There were already a few games, but Microsoft is just giving up now.
There are 6 games made by Rare that aren't released for the Switch N64 app.
Another list of rare games released
In fact, the biggest complaint is that the Switch needs even more games.
33 games not on Switch
It does look like the console wars are going cold.
I always thought console "wars" were for stupid 12 year olds arguing about teraflops and triangles.
It could be forseen with consoles basically becoming PCs. Terms people still use like "PC port." It's not really much of a port, they are the same architecture. I imagine most devs do a ton of the work on PC first, not like the old days where you would serial port to a dev kit. Even Sony sees there's money in opening up their games to more of a market with the work involved being minimal to do so.
I don't see consoles going entirely away, tons of people don't care about anything hardware and just want something to play their two or three really mainstream games on. Sony will keep making them. Nintendo will keep making them, if you call the Switch a console. It's more of a dockable successor to the 3DS.
A lot of my complaints about PC were addressed so I went back, with the added benefit of being able to run old games and emulators the easiest of any platform too. Now lets get rid of Windows.
The console wars weren't entirely bad. Competition is good for any marketplace, and it was up to 1st and 2nd party developers to sell a generation. With direct assistance, their platform knowledge was usually excellent, and a lot of the technical innovation seen was as a result of them showcasing hardware.
Now that the quality of a game is measured in tranny flags and ESG ratings, this just isn't the case anymore. It'll be interesting to see how Stellar Blade goes. If it is successful, and Sony commits to using their 1st party studios to make games that people actually want to play, they might again be of some use. Microsoft will have to follow or fold.
The entire reason they became a "war" is because people were in fact 12 years old and thereby couldn't have plural consoles, nor afford a PC good enough to play games (or be allowed to play with dumb family members).
When you get once a year to ask for an Xbox for Christmas, its in fact a major problem when the big game everyone is playing is on Playstation and you are completely left out by it. So all they can do is impotently hate on the opposite to try and make themselves feel better, and retreat into tribalism.
Adult men participating in it is in fact retarded, but its purpose as a marketing tool and original existence makes complete sense. Same with the fact that consoles are a pittance compared to what they used to be, so most kids will in fact have multiple.
Yeah I only had a Genesis and I shared it with my brother and we had TWO whole games for it and the occasional rental. I don't remember what they cost back then, but I do remember that games cost more than what I could really get as a birthday present. I didn't buy a console myself until the Xbox came out and I was older by then.
I was very lucky though, my Dad worked for an old school (like guys in a pile of junk in an old house programming) company. His boss liked me and used to give me dumb little projects in trade for discarded computer parts. Sure, none of it was good, but to play the shareware stuff I'd download off BBS or cheap stuff I'd get at Radio Shack it was way more than enough.
Well for comparison the N64 launched at 200$, which was considered a literal steal for the value in 1996 to try and lure people into mass adoption. That's 450$ or so today after inflation. The Switch costs about 200$ itself for the Lite version and 300$ for the regular today.
With the games for it costing around 60$ for first party and upwards of 80$ for others a piece. The only difference from today is they religiously slashed prices as games got older back then, so most people probably remember getting them for a fraction of that a year or so later.
Sega seemed to be even more expensive itself than Nintendo, which is probably why they lost that generation's console war so hard.
I think Android is doing that already. The problem is when I want to dock my phone to a TV. I want it to do the things a Switch does, but it doesn't. Mouse and keyboard are weird and it doesn't turn off it's screen when docked. I want to play Symphony of the Night off my phone on my TV and the lag is terrible.
Yeah one thing I forgot is how much kids are comfortable playing things on phones and tablets. Those touch controls make me want to throw the thing across the room.
I'd still be shocked if Nintendo goes away from that any time soon. They have a strong library of games people want that don't seem to be losing ground as badly.
The games all link up to controllers via Bluetooth. The SotN version on Android is awesome that way. Also, most phones are powerful enough to play GTA5 or Skyrim now. Heck, I have a Bloodstained port on my phone.
Also it was common for PC ports to be significantly worse than the console originals (which were often designed about features unique to a particular console architecture), so if you wanted to play the best version of a game you had to have the console.
Is there a single game being made today where the PC port is a step down from the Console? I keep hearing about how in theory that should be possible, but in practice I always hear the opposite: how the console port of a PC game is a significant step down.
There are still occasional games being released with menu and control scheme designs that are clearly intended for console players.
Sometimes it's not that bad, but sometimes it makes a game almost as godawful as console ports released around a decade ago.