Multi-console games: Good or bad?

[JRMacumber]

A question was brought up in one of my favorite magazine's this month. It is: Does console-inclusivity dilute a game's technical prowess and, therefore, compromise the entire experience?

Your thoughts?

[AllYourBase]

I think we have seen many examples of games ported from the PC or PS2 to the XBOX that do not use the fantastic abilities of the console. Such there may be a few tweaks but games like Ghost Recon whilst loved by many on the xbox live community to me seem a bit shoddy for a next gen console.

It can be done the other way which I think is better for everybody. Splinter Cell was designed with the xbox in mind and has fantastic lighting effects and textures. In the ports to the cube and ps2 a little but not much of this has been lost. I would assume that everybody is happy in this case.

The sheer amount of multi-format games specifically designed to make a killing financially and not give anything back to the gaming community in terms of originality or utilising the platforms unique abilities is prevalent though. Games like enter the matrix and minority report are prime examples of this "dilution" in the gaming industry. These are games I tend to avoid anyway/

Fortunately there is still a lot of innovation out there and in the case of XIII I am sure that multiformat release will be welcomed by all.

Swings and roundabouts really!

[overlord uk]

I think it mostly affects PC gamers. It's blatantly obvious when a console game is ported to the PC because they have some very clear differences, and are often shoddily converted. I'm trying to think of some good examples of this but can't at the moment

[jcee]

IMO it is bad. The PS2 is the console of choice for developers in general and therefore use this less powerful platform as their template of choice.

The result? Multiformat games never look better than the lowest platform for which they are developed (there are some notable exceptions to this however), which in this generation is the PS2.

[2 Point]

A question was brought up in one of my favorite magazine's this month. It is: Does console-inclusivity dilute a game's technical prowess and, therefore, compromise the entire experience?

Your thoughts?

I would say that is true. For a title to spread itself over all three consoles there has to be comprimise, whether that be graphical, sonic or control. If possible I always take the XBox version, it generally has the best of all worlds. I prefer sports games on the PS2, which is a bonus as EA have the online PS2 market sorted. Not online yet with the PS2, but Madden and (hides) FIFA, being online this is a must.

Splinter Cell on the PS2 didn't come anywhere near the XBox version, the added benefit of 5.1 on top of the firepower made it a second rate product before it was out of the box.

The GC seems to get the cross releases last (or is this just my perception?), making it's already difficult position next to impossible.

[jcee]

The GC seems to get the cross releases last (or is this just my perception?), making it's already difficult position next to impossible.

Yes it does. The only official word is that the discs take longer to manufacture than standard DVD's: something Nintendo should of sorted by now. We all know how impatient gamers are (hence much of the import activity), so to delay a game is commercial suicide when it's readily available on other formats.

[saif]

I think its fine as long as the ported game retains the "soul" of the original.

I'm not bothered, to be honest, by graphical downgrades. Graphics are important, I am not going to deny that at all and they can make the game better - definitely. But if the game is heavily reliant on certain graphics then it should be redesigned for the host platform IMHO.
If the detail drops, I am usually not too bothered. If the framerate drops (or becomes choppy) thats a different issue.

[Vaipon]

PC gamers definitely get the short end of the stick when it comes to ports and shoddy games. Look at MGS2:SOL. One of the most piss-poor effortless attempts to bring a console game to the home computer brigade I have ever seen. It wasn't just a port, it was a double frickin port! The xbox version was inferior to the PS2 original, but the PC version is just a port of the xbox code (and get this, they haven't even changed the controller settings screen, there are still references to the xbox in there). Somehow, the PC version needs 512MB of memory and a 1.5Ghz CPU (AND!! a 3d accelerator on top) to even approach the same level of play as the PS2 original. Granted, the PC's sloppy hardware design (totally out-of-date compared to modern consoles) and the behemoth that is Windoze contribute to these laughable "recommended" specs, but a small amount of effort would of at least yielded a little more performance. Utterly shoddy. I strongly believe that the PC is dead in practically every genre bar FPS, RTS, Beardy-Wierdy Flight Sim etc, and partially due to them being shafted every time they get a port of a popular console title.

All in all, I am in favour of multi-format console releases though as long as the devco spends at least a little bit of time tweaking and optimising for the target platform. 99% of the time, this can only be achieved by developing the games simultaniously using a tight, shared core code/engine. A favorite example of mine would be Burnout2. Superb game on all 3 systems, with the xbox version incorporating system-specific features such as custom soundtrack support, and more crash scenarios etc. Soul Calibur 2 is another great example how cross-platform development can be polished to a standard where it is virtually indistinguishable from an exclusive title.

Despite this though, I never want to see console-exclusive titles die, and I doubt we ever will. The select few games which are developed with a single architecture in mind are always the slickest from a technical standpoint. To some, this level of finesse is invisible, but to many of the forum members who have been gaming since the 8bit days, there is a certain respect and appreciation for this mentality towards game design. I'm still impressed when I see a piece of software that has a brand new effect which isn't some off-the-shelf D3D function, it's an actual product of some hard maths. Stuff like Anubis on the PS2 is full of little "wow" moments where you see something that hasn't been tried before. Previously, latter day PS1 games were also pushing the envelope in terms of coding tricks, with a complete disregard that the game would ever need to be ported, hence achieving the best with the given hardware. The more platforms you support, the higher level the coding language has to be, and the less-impressive/more-portable your game is. The art of "coding to the metal" on a single format is still alive and well, and is even more relevant in the latter period of a console's life because of the requirement to achieve ever more impressive graphics from aging technology. If all we had up to the death of the PS1 was a load of generic ports, with environments and effects that we'd seen a million times before, I think people would of lost interest a long time before SONY rolled out the PS2.

Multi-platform games are totally necessary, and they can be done well if handled properly, but exclusives are here to stay.

[Magnakai]

Wow, Vaipon, I think you just summed it up perfectly.
*applauds*

[JRMacumber]

Vaipon, I see your point, and I agree with you for the most part. But, the main gist of what I was asking, and I suppose I did a poor job of laying it out, is this: Do you think a game that is made to cover multiple consoles is lessened because of that fact? In the article, it was intimated that if a game is made for one system, and one system only, then it has a greater chance of being, and please pardon the expression, all the game it can be. But, conversely, if it is made to span many systems, then it is inherently weakened and is therefore lesser because of it.

So, do you think that is true?

[Burai]

Vaipon takes the example of MGS2, which is a good one.

As one of the top tier games on PS2, Konami made full use of the elusive dual-processing gubbins and really understood how the hardware works and how to make it tick.

But when porting it to machines without these features, you have to either completely rewrite the code from scratch or you end up with something with a ****e framerate, etc. ala the Xbox and PC ports of MGS2. For the audience they could gain, it wasn't worth a complete re-write.

This isn't always a problem. Most programmers can't even use the PS2 as intended, so they program it as you would do any console which makes ports painless, but when the original game wasn't that hot, you still end up with ****e anyway.

The only safe way of doing a multiformat title is to have three separate teams doing each version ala Soul Calibur II, but when the PS2 is the only format likely to make you the big bucks, you can understand why they aren't too fussed.

Anyone who puts a whole team on Xbox and especially GameCube ports and doesn't have a big bag of cash needs their head reading in the current climate.

Alternatively, they could use a middleware platform like Renderware which cuts porting effort down a heck of a lot and can certainly provide some excellent results (Burnout 2, Winning Eleven 6 as cases in point)

[Endlee]

What if developers just make the 'game' on XBox, and then later on, they can easily just port it to the PS2 and NGC, by breaking anything down that can be handled on the XBox, but not on the PS2 and NGC.

Splinter Cell is a good example of this.

But at the end of the day, the developers make their games on the PS2. Difficult to make than on both XBox and NGC, but the money is better than a wide margin, look at Burnout 2, Hitman 2, FIFA series, etc.



Not sure if i can get this message across you guys better than this...

[Vaipon]

Vaipon, I see your point, and I agree with you for the most part. But, the main gist of what I was asking, and I suppose I did a poor job of laying it out, is this: Do you think a game that is made to cover multiple consoles is lessened because of that fact? In the article, it was intimated that if a game is made for one system, and one system only, then it has a greater chance of being, and please pardon the expression, all the game it can be. But, conversely, if it is made to span many systems, then it is inherently weakened and is therefore lesser because of it.

So, do you think that is true?

Yes.

There are two situations involved where multi-platform games are concerned though. If a game is released on a specific platform first, and it's an enjoyable title, then I don't think porting it to other formats lessens it in any way. The game was never built to be ported, but if it is, (even if it is converted poorly eg MGS2), the original is still just as "valid" as it was at release. If the port is superior, then great, but the original is still the game it always was and is no less impressive/playable.

The other scenario, where a game is developed on multiple platforms simultaneously is a lot harder to answer. The trouble with this is that we (the players) are never going to know if a game could of been better if it was platform-specific, because by it's very nature, it was planned as a multi-format product from inception. You could argue that if they set out to design a game in this way, and if it's 100% what they wanted it to be, then the title is the best it could of been. We never get to see a version of the game that isn't multi-format, so we have no point of comparison. Burnout2 was a great racing game, but could it of been better if it was developed specifically for the xbox? Or if it used a specific engine instead of renderware? Who knows? Probably yeah, but we're never going to know. Maybe a different xbox-specific graphics engine would of changed the framerate in an intricate way that affected the underlying "feel" of the game's driving, and in the process, made it a completely different title to the one which was released. Could of been better, could of been worse, we'll never know. Perhaps Burnout2 is a bad example, because the game was produced by Criterion who also develop renderware, so they no doubt modified the engine during development anyway.

I think it's very subjective, and depends largely on how much of a graphics/effects "whore" you are. Me personally (going back to my original "Yes" answer), I find platform-specific games are usually more enjoyable than multi-formats because of the type of person I am. A lot of this is because I love to see hardware really pushed, and gameplay designed tightly around a certain controller maximising it's potential. The added degree of focus which a single-platform affords a team results in a game that is tailor-made and utilised the hardware more fully. It seems impossible to me that Panzer Dragoon Orta could of been as good if it was multi-format. A lot of the time though, even platform-specific games are b0rked by the devco, because (as Burai said) they don't have the talent to use the hardware properly (esp in the case of the PS2).

Endlee: This is how most multi-platform development is done nowadays anyway. They aim at the most powerful hardware and sacrifice elements for the other formats (less lasers on-screen, 30fps, lower texture resolution etc).

[JRMacumber]

Great post, Vaipon, and exactly why I made the thread. Thank you.

[tssk]

I'd hate to see the end of ports.

Rez and Crazy Taxi inferior on the PS2? Bah. I'd rather play a pretty close port rather than go without.