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Destiny will arrive on 360, PS3 and “future console platforms”, we learned yesterday. Bungie’s next blockbuster is a cross-generation game, then. And it certainly won’t be last.
Combined, PS3 and 360 represent a user base of over 140 million. For thirdparties like Destiny publisher Activision, drawing a line under that colossal marketplace and starting again simply doesn’t make business sense. Sony and Microsoft’s next boxes will inevitably attract millions of early adopters, but they will represent a fraction of the current-gen player base for years to come. Unless developers and publishers are heavily incentivised by platform holders to make their titles exclusive to next-gen, it seems unlikely they’ll do so. Instead, we’ll see the next era of blockbuster videogames span the generations.
“I would not expect any launch titles to be exclusive to the new platforms,” says senior analyst at Brean Capital Todd Mitchell. “Developers have had dev-kits for the new consoles for over a year now. Usually they run a parallel development process to current-gen. I would expect the next-gen consoles to enable certain multiplayer, community or connected features not available on current-gen.”
One option open to developers making cross-gen games is to build a cutting-edge next-gen title and scaling it down for release on current-gen tech. It’s something Crytek has been doing for years, says the studio’s senior field applications engineer Sean Tracy.
Crytek says that its game engine allows developers to create high-end next-gen games and then scale them back for a current-gen release.
“We at Crytek strive to push the boundaries of visuals and gameplay on all platforms we develop our games for,” he tells us. “Leveraging the power of the CryEngine allows us at Crytek to develop a game with the highest fidelity and then export the game and its content to other, more hardware restricted, platforms.”
“Our ultimate goal is to have a single interface where we only need to build the game once and not recreate it for individual platforms. This is one of many things that makes CryEngine so attractive to developers as it saves them time and increases the overall quality of their games. I can’t speak of course for all our developers but this is what we encourage, as working on the highest spec and then creatively solving how to achieve these high-end effects on less powerful hardware is what the CryEngine, simply put, is best at.“
As Epic Games also noted recently, this kind of flexibility will be increasingly important for studios as we transition to next-gen. As well as potentially releasing two versions of the same game – one cutting edge, one current-gen – always-on game services will help studios claw back revenue from its investment in new platforms. Next-gen exclusive DLC and other platform-specific features will take advantage of the new technology in a way that current-gen can’t – they’ll also increasingly tempt game players into upgrading to the more powerful box.
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Electronic Arts and Zynga have settled their dispute over The Sims Social and The Ville out of court, the terms of the settlement undisclosed.
EA filed a suit against the social games giant last August, citing the similarities between Zynga’s The Ville and its own The Sims Social and calling the game an “unmistakeable copy”. Zynga fought back in September, calling EA’s argument a “baseless sham”
Today, both companies issued a joint statement: “EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California”.
It’s a disappointing conclusion to what was touted as a principled case against Zynga’s business practices, widely viewed by the industry as unethical.
“Maxis isn’t the first studio to claim that Zynga copied its creative product,” wrote a righteous Lucy Bradshaw, Maxis’ general manager, on EA’s The Beat blog at the time. “But we are the studio that has the financial and corporate resources to stand up and do something about it.
“By calling Zynga out on this illegal practice, we hope to have a secondary effect of protecting the rights of other creative studios who don’t have the resources to protect themselves… Today, we hope to be taking a stand that helps the industry protect the value of original creative works and those that work tirelessly to create them.”
By settling out of court, EA has discarded this crusade and abandoned the independent developers it claimed it sought to protect by launching the legal action. Clearly, the value of that victory was outweighed by the compensation it was offered.
We’ve contacted Maxis and EA for comment.
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Sony will cut the price of Vita on February 28 in Japan, the company has announced. The under-performing handheld will drop from ¥24,980 (£174 / $269) to ¥19,980 (£139 / $215).
Earlier this month, Sony revised its sales forecast for the console from 16 million units – which it predicted last May – to seven million units by March 31 this year.
A new colour, Ice Silver, will become available on the same day as the price cut, and will come bundled with Phantasy Star Online 2.
Sony won’t be drawn on whether price cuts will spread to other regions, but with the console’s relatively poor sales it seems inevitable. A price cut alone won’t be enough to make the hardware attractive, however, and Sony will have to ensure more games make it to market – especially as it gears up to announce the next generation PlayStation this week.
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