'Consoles Are A Problem' and 'A Step Backwards,' Says Oddworld Creator
"I think the consoles are a problem," he told GameDaily BIZ. "Years ago I was excited about consoles, but anything that makes development more expensive, rather than better, faster, cheaper, I think is a step backwards."
The creator of console titles such as Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (PC, PSX) and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (Xbox), Lanning sees the PC market as more exciting because the platform allows "for more smaller games to be sold that can be delivered to anyone who's connected at much lower price points."
He added: "There's a big difference between spending $50 or $60 on a game and hoping I love it and buying a game for $5 and then buying additional content for that game, so by the time I have invested $50 in it I really love it and I've personalized it a lot more to what I'm interested in."
Curiously, Lanning makes no mention of the cheap downloadable games that are available to PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii owners. While full-fledged console titles are usually priced between $40 and $60, downloadable releases are typically priced between $5 and $15, with more content often available post-release.
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magicfucker
replyHows development more expensive.. having to target a PC with so many possible problems seems more expensive to me.
On the other hand, I love first person shooters but I can't play with a controller. For some reason, most FPS games dont support a keyboard and mouse combo.. and when they do, like in Unreal 3, it's still unplayable since the framerate is so low (< 30). My PC is not brand new so it chugs when playing some FPS games online..which means I have no viable platform to play good FPS games on.
What also pisses me off is that this "HD era" is not really HD since a lot of games upscale (especially on the PS3) and do not render at a solid 30 fps and definitely not at 60 fps. On top of this are hardware failures on consoles such as RROD or inability to read discs. The whole state of gaming in terms of hardware platforms is pretty saddening to me now.-
No I think he means that with the PC you don't need to have a 10 million dollar budget poured into your games.
Heck, Braid had a development cost of $180k - that's ridiculous.-
A large AAA game will still have a budget in the millions even if developed from the ground up for the PC.
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Well, it is a lot less the case with PC development than it used to be...
But in general:
* Debugging and deployment is instantaneous on a PC and requires no special equipment, only the development software. This helps you turn over and test a lot faster while having less overhead.
* The number of development tools and software libraries available for PC is still far larger than for consoles and there is a lot more "cheap" or "free" tools and libraries.
* When you sell a PC game, you don't have to give the maker of the PC a percentage of the cut.
* Anyone can distribute and sell PC software. Really all you need is a download host (and for smaller budgeted games with a smaller audience, dreamhost offers up enough bandwidth).
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