#Console game development

[askagamedev]

Why is it so difficult for a fourth competitor to enter the console market? Like what are some of the biggest challenges and obstacles?

Any company that wants to release a premium game console basically needs to make an enormous investment that will probably not pay off for years. There are three major requirements for this process.

First, the company must develop gaming hardware. This is generally an expensive process - building anything physical is costly, time-consuming, and is a moving target because competitors aren't stopping either. The hardware must be manufactured and factories equipped and set up for mass production.

Second, they must develop software development tools for both themselves and for external developers to use in order to build games for that console. This requires a significant internal development team to build drivers and software interfaces. Beyond this, they likely need to develop their own flagship game (or more) to launch with the console. That generally costs at least $50 million for a AAA-fidelity game and at least two years of lead time to build alongside the hardware development.

Third, they must secure investment from third party developers to build games for that console. Using that $50 million price tag for a game, we'd need at least four or five additional games to launch with in order to entice players to buy in - no one buys a game console without games to play on it. If they want four launch titles to go along with the console launch, that requires at least $200 million in investment from others.

There are only a handful of companies in the world that have the kind of money, technology, and resources needed to make such a thing happen and some of them already have game consoles. The others look at the market, at the cost of entry just to compete (not necessarily even to pull ahead), at the expected returns on investment, and it's no surprise they choose to invest their money in other opportunities that seem more likely to bear fruit.

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[skopostheorie]

Like actually in general my parents never just. bought me video games unprompted. I listen to Scott the Woz talk about his parents buying him games and Nintendo Power subscriptions just for no reason and I'm like. ?????? Families do that?

[arcadebroke]

SEGA SATURN Sophia Development Systems

[prokopetz]

Folks tend to talk about fidelity in retro game visual design in terms of adhering to the limitations of particular consoles, but I think keeping in mind where they weren't limited is at least as important. When a console could do something that previous console generations – or its current competitors – couldn't, its developers tended to want to show that off, and while these effects are often thoroughly unremarkable to contemporary audiences, they're a big part of each console's distinctive "feel". For example, the NES only had one tilemap plane, but it could decide whether to render sprites behind or in front of it on a per-sprite basis, so you get a lot of games with complicated set-piece levels where the player character walks behind a foreground object. The Super Nintendo, conversely, could do multiple independently scrolling tilemaps for not a lot of resoruces, so Super Nintendo games that are trying to wow players with their visuals love themselves some multi-plane parallax. This sort of "hey, look what we can do" showboating is just as essential to a console's visual identity as having the right number of entries in your colour table.

[molegato]

Do you all know my little game Frogun? It's a lowpoly platformer in which you have a froggy grappling gun! 🐸💙

You can get Frogun for PC here:

[poisonouspastels]

I wish more people would weigh out the demand of how "realistic" something is regarding horror media thats supposed to be around a certain time era or within certain limitations with the fact that if it WERE 100% accurate to what it's trying to represent, it'd probably be lame as hell.

[l-1-z-a]

📺🔥 Some facts about The Sims 2 Console Development from chat of recent stream with Will Wright: Fire Hazard

In the stream chat there was a user with the nickname Hans_10K8, who claims to have worked on Sims 2 on home consoles, shared some facts about its development. And one of those facts is about "fire hazard" mechanic and why this is exist in game.

"Yes, memory of the consoles is what limited how "'many" of things you could have in the world. When we did the console games we disguised the memory issues as a "fire hazard" : mechanic and that if you went over, things might randomly catch on fire so that they would be eliminated from the memory ultimately. It's a feature, not a bug!"

This fact relates to the optimization of The Sims 2 for PlayStation 2 (PS2), where the console's memory limitations dictated how many objects could simultaneously be present in the game world. The developers solved this problem by introducing game mechanics: if a player placed too many objects, it was considered a "fire hazard" and objects could accidentally catch fire. This was a clever way to hide the technical limitations by presenting them as part of the gameplay rather than a flaw in the game. In this way, players saw it as a feature rather than a problem related to the console's performance.

[stupidrant]

Since we’re on the topic of video games, im tired of these fucking remakes. Ive said it before but i’ll say it again each time. These companies dont wanna invest in an actually good remaster or port and would rather waste their time with these remakes bcuz “ooh look how shiny and better the graphics look!!1!1!1” often times it has an empty feeling because everything has to be ultra realism super 6000. Its gotten so bad that now regular gamers are starting to gaslight you into playing or enjoying them. So much has been lost artistically, (like the cool UI designs) that it’s now considered “juvenile” and that i need to “grow up” and “accept it” 😂

[doomdoomofdoom]

due to topical demand

(x)

[camashred]

It's been a wee while so *throws y'all something*

Lion Fighter 64 (pre-alpha screenshot)

[martin-j4c]

I am writing my thesis about handheld console games using portability, and its frustrating that the whole thing just boils down to:

Yea the DS and 3DS were cool and nothing interesting happened ever since.

[askagamedev]

A report from Eurogamer and VGC stated that Nintendo showed their next console to a select few developers at Gamescom behind closed doors. Do you think the report is plausible? And is it generally common for console manufacturers to talk about their next console to developers privately towards the end of a console generation?

Is it plausible?

Of course it's plausible. The Nintendo Switch started development around 2012-2013, was unveiled in 2016, and was released in 2017. It's been six years since the Switch launched. If Nintendo started developing a new console shortly after the Switch's launch (2018), we're about due for a new console unveiling.

Is it common for console manufacturers to talk about the next console to developers privately?

Absolutely. How do you think the new console's third party launch games get made? We on the dev side get to work with the console dev kits before the public knows about them because new consoles need to launch with games to play or nobody will buy them. We need at least a year (preferably two or three) to build a whole game on new hardware, so you can do the math - if our game launches with the new console in holiday season 2025, that means we need the console dev kits to start building the game 2022-2024. How do you think we get those dev kits if we don't talk to the console manufacturers? We get the dev kits early and are all sworn to NDA Secrecy for that time.

I'll clarify to say that I can neither confirm nor deny anything that I am currently working on, nor can I confirm nor deny the existence of any next-gen Nintendo (or Sony or Microsoft or other party) console system. I am only speaking hypothetically as someone who worked on launch titles for the [PS4/XBOne generation and the PS3/X360 generation].

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[jacob-blogs]

The amount of people not buying a Switch 2 on launch gives me hope that there won't be any shortage/supply issues when it releases.

[andrevasims]

Sims 3 for the original Nintendo DS

Sim customization with sliders for facial features, a dozen personality traits, Wish fulfillment & point reward system, Buy Mode with many TS3 objects plus flavor text, open world navigation & exploration, jobs & skilling, relationships, free will...

tbh I kept trying to use the mouse to move the camera because I forgot I was emulating the DS lol

[waywardly-we-go]

I was doing a thing where I tried every single branch in a good amount of Cyberpunk 2077's dialogue ages ago, and I just have to say it left me surprisingly impressed.

It is largely linear, but not nearly to the degree that I had first thought.

There aren't massive branching dialogue trees, but there are just quiet little diversions that happen so smoothly you don't even necessarily realize you made a branching choice...unless you get in there with time to kill and 6+ reloads. Taking a blue choice or acting in a timed dialogue, for example, can appear to have little consequence at first but has actually quietly shifted you onto one track instead of another.

The effect, I realized, is that as you play it feels like the choices you made are the only ones possible.

First of all, how fucking brilliant. Second of all, it's so thankless - if I hadn't gone back with this silly little project in mind I would have continued on my way thinking it was as simple as it first appears. It reminds me of the first person pov, both in how unpopular it was and how it clearly, carefully supports a beautifully immersive experience. The difference, I guess, is that first person pov smacks you in the face and makes you admit it's brilliant, while dialogue flies under the radar.

Ultimately, I still can't get over how intentional they were with this game, and how willing they were to take risks - and I hope to god that mindset didn't get crushed by the initial reception.