It’s interesting, I get a lot of interview questions sent to me from the media that ask when such and such game will be on the console. The answer is usually: never.
I like my consoles. My kids like them. But I’m a greedy capitalistic bastard who wants to make money. And for the large scope strategy games I design it means the PC.
If I was making an action game or a first person shooter, I’d likely make it for the console. The RPG we have in pre-production (very early pre-production) is targeting consoles as well as the PC. So I’m not some sort of PC zealot. I just don’t see how I can make the kind of strategy game that *I want to play* on the console without gimping it to the point that it would ruin the game and thus be a financial disaster.
Let’s consider the specs on my favorite console, the XBOX 360.
It is essentially a custom PC running a 3-core PowerPC from 5 years ago. It has 512MB of total RAM that it has to also share with the ATI designed graphics system.
Now, eventually there will be a new generation of consoles that will be much more powerful than this. But by that time, 64-bit PC games will start coming out that will be able to address many GIGS of RAM (virtual or real) resulting in games that can look lifelike AND have the kind of scope that PC strategy gamers tend to embrace (and from our vantage point more importantly – buy).
There are strategy games being made for the PC. Supreme Commander 2 is due out shortly and Chris Taylor is certainly a more experienced game designer than I am so maybe he’s figured out a way to make it work. But *I* can’t see how to make it work. Not for the kinds of strategy games I want to play.
By enabling Mouse and Keyboard support for games on consoles, they'll literally open up entirely new levels of success for their strategy games. For example, Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3 enabled Keyboard and Mouse support via the USB slots on the console. It was fantastic. The multiplayer games even had descriptions between games that were Controller Only or Mouse/Keyboard. The Xbox 360 version does not support this at all despite the fact that the console accepts Keyboard inputs for when typing messages or entering information. The controls are limited by design; it appears Microsoft would rather accept terrible games on their console (Command & Conquer 3 with a controller, anyone?) than allow people to use Mouse and Keyboards in place of their first-party controller. Pitty, really.
Game consoles have been (deliberately) crippled for years by manufacturer(s) for marketing purposes. Console hardware is sold at a loss, and depends on software sales (a secret "attach rate") to make the platform profitable.
Add a keyboard & mouse to a console, users might stop buying games and just surf the net (or whatever) with them.
It's why the original Xbox was a such a disaster for Microsoft. Beyond the game piracy issues (which continue on the XB360), end users were running linux on them. An attach rate of "zero" became possible. Microsoft dropped the Xbox as fast as possible, and rushed the XB360 into the market - with all it's unresolved hardware problems intact. (Not that Vista's release was any better quality wise - MS reminds me very much of General Motors in the 80's, 90's and today's Toyota it seems) Such a pity.
The keyboard, mouse, (and piracy - sigh) are the only major advantages (thanks to DRM) the PC platform offers end users these days. If game console manufacturers added full mouse/keyboard support, and adjusted their business model to allow some profit at the hardware sales point - the PC as a game platform would be dead and buried. Or at the very least, marginalized to niche status. That is what I believe we see happening today in the video game industry.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
