Source: Engadget
Here’s a riddle for you: If the price of a PS3 dev kit falls in the video game forest, does anyone hear it?
Sony just announced that in order to attract more developers to their console they are dropping the price of their development kit from $20,000 to $10,250. For those that don’t know, a development kit (or “dev kit” as it’s known on the streets) is the thing needed by video game designers to have easy access to a console’s infrastructure in order to create games.
For the big developers like EA or Activision, this is chump change since their budgets for video games are several million dollars. This price cut is for all those lesser or unknown Mom & Pop style development groups that are just getting their feet wet in the world of video game development. What I’d like to know is does Sony really think this price cut will persuade independent developers towards their console? Before you answer that, consider a couple more facts.
See why Sony is accomplishing nothing with this price cut after the jump.
For a little comparison purposes, the dev kit for the Wii is only $2000 and last I checked the 360 dev kit was going for less than $100 or sometimes free if you happened to be at the right development conference. Then you have to factor in the number of installed consoles in homes around the world. Xbox 360 and Wii have both surpassed the 13 million mark while PS3 has just finally reached the 5 million milestone. On top of all that, it has been almost unanimously agreed upon by every single developer that the PS3 is much more difficult to program for compared to the 360 (hence all the PS3 delayed release dates).
So all this just begs the question: Why in the world would an independent developer with a very small budget choose to spend $10,000 on a dev kit for a console that has a severely inferior install base and a much more difficult architecture to program for?
Sorry Sony but I think you’re gonna have to start paying people to take these off your hands if you want the support of independent developers. Maybe if you added some of those Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men you’d attract more attention, ya know, like they have in those Going Out Of Business Sales (*wink*, *wink*).
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10 responses so far ↓
1 bigbaddaboom // Nov 19, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Good point. I have yet to figure out what sony is thinking. But I tell yah what, they are sure as hell not helping the blue ray cause. I see the PS3 heading the direction of the beta max. If I were a Sony head, my stategy at this point would toexecute an exit strategy, and begin focus on enven more elaborate next gen with unrushed development and a reasonable price point.
2 Networker // Nov 19, 2007 at 4:30 pm
what you are saying is terribly wrong, many of the biggest names in the development business have said that the ps3 is no harder to develop for, but is is fun and exciting and this will maybe continue to the beginning of 2008 and then developers will abandon the 360 like a sunken ship, nobody wants to cut out half their game and make it a inferior product just to place it on a 9gb disk. i think that assassins creed will be one of the last multiplatform games that will manage to keep just a slight difference between the two.
3 Yousty // Nov 19, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I think you’re mistaken. As I recall there was one developer that said the PS3 was “fun and exciting” to develop for. He never said it was easy or even equivalent to the 360.
Take a poll among all of the top developers and I bet that almost all of them would say that right now the PS3 is much more difficult to program for because it is so different from what they’re used to. If the bigwigs in the video game industry are struggling with the PS3 architecture then how in the world are independent developers supposed to handle it without a ton of extra time and research.
4 Hollywood // Nov 19, 2007 at 4:35 pm
cough cough. yay?
5 Networker // Nov 19, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Same thing happen´d with the ps2 era of gaming as you should know and everyone taught it was a total bitch and third party developers didn´t have the money or time but now there is basicly too many to count. I agree that now is not the time for thir party devs. to be working on ps3 games but atleast sony knows this and trying to help them by putting the price down its only on step of many more to come. and i bet that if microsoft was in this situation they couldn´t care less, they haven´t been known to be customer or developer friendly trough the years .
6 Captain DDL // Nov 19, 2007 at 5:24 pm
I wish I had 10k.
7 Sean "rothbart" Workman // Nov 19, 2007 at 5:44 pm
People WISHING for the demise of Sony are ignorant self-absorbed little . You want no competition and a monopoly? Because that’s what you’d basically have. Nintendo and Microsoft are aiming at two different targets now.
Cheaper devkits are (drumroll please) CHEAPER. Jesus, what a concept. Jonathan Mak (Everyday Shooter) is a one-man dev team. He ported his game to PS3 in 3 days. What do you think is the bigger priority? Making development on the PS3 easier or dropping $10k from the devkit price?
Look at it this way, instead of lesser-funded developers getting into PS3 development, now the “big boys” of development can fit TWICE AS MANY dev kits into their budgets. Maybe we’ll see (gasp) more development.
I realize the article was a funny spin on the topic, but Yousty, both Kane & Lynch developers and Call of Duty developers said the PS3 wasn’t particularly hard to develop for.
I look at Ratchet & Clank, Uncharted, Call of Duty 4 (to name a few recent releases) and it’s clear that good game development CAN happen on the PS3.
How can cheaper PS3 devkits be anything OTHER than a good thing unless you’re one of the asshats wanting Sony to implode into nothingness, giving Microsoft the run of the last… $70-$80/year Live Gold subscriptions, $0.015 Microsoft points, monthly fees, higher DLC/video content… I mean if there’s no competition to keep them in check, they can do WHATEVER they want and consumers have no counter.
8 Sean "rothbart" Workman // Nov 19, 2007 at 5:45 pm
funny, I didn’t even put a bad word in that comment above, but it filtered it out. Just assume I said “asshats” in the first line…
9 Flint50 // Nov 19, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Comparing porting a game like “Everyday Shooter” to PS3 is not a feat worth mentioning. That game does not use the power of the PS3, and could run on much lower end hardware. What would be good to see is if a game like Halo 3 could be ported to PS3 and look better. Ports are also not difficult to make if they were programmed correctly in the first place.
I don’t care about games that look the same on both systems. I have both, and if a game comes out for both, I’ll buy the 360 version. Why? Cause it has achievements, a more comfortable controller, and more players online. The PS3 in my opinion is for much more complicated and graphically intensive games.
The PS3 just isn’t doing well because people don’t want to make those complicated games with high-end graphics and physics. What sells these days is smaller games, more fun titles which don’t focus on hardcore graphics and 300 enemies on the screen. Developers don’t need the power of the PS3 to make these games, so why should they buy the kit? Companies make ports of the games to PS3 just to gain a few extra sales.
Don’t take this the wrong way, I would like to see Sony succeed and own a PS3 myself. The industry always needs competition. This does NOT mean that a system “has” to be bought to keep the competition. The PS3 games have either not impressed me or are also on 360. Heavenly Sword was a rental since it was only 5 hours long.
However, just because a system is more powerful does not mean that it is a better system. This is an elitist view, and if you have it, you yourself can be viewed upon as ignorant.
10 gringo hairpiece // Nov 20, 2007 at 3:36 am
@Networker The brother of my colleague used to work for Take2 (worked on Bioshock) and has recently moved to UBISoft. He’s principally a sound engineer although he does other areas including autoaiming for consoles. He has developed for all three nextgen consoles (and in fact owns all three).
His experience has been that the 360 is very easy to develop for and despite what you may think Microsoft has bent over backwards to assist all developers, the tools are cheap\effective and well supported. On the other hand Sony’s tools are expensive and buggy and the console is in his own words “an absolute c@nt to develop for”. He likened it to having a formula one car but with the gearbox and engine connected by rubber bolts.
Oh and in case you claim bias his favourite console is the Wii
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