Explanation: Whatever console/method is easiest to create and port games for and is united on all the major areas of the world in terms of popularity, that is usually the console that does well. Some examples: -The Super Nintendo being the more "Arcade" friendly system due to wider use of gamesaves and somewhat more powerful system when it came to porting arcade versions. -The Playstation being a leading front in all major nations due to it having higher 3D capabilities then the Saturn and using a more effective format media that allowed publishers to have enough room to port things on then the N64? Oh, and it got most of the major companies at the time behind it (Square, Enix before the merger, Konami for the most part, Capcom for the most part, etc). Not to mention cheaper games and systems (Saturn was $400, if I remember correctly, while many N64 games were $70) -The Playstation 2, I think, had several lucks going for it. One: the graphics and capabilies at the time (before the Xbox and GCN were released) were somewhat stronger then the Dreamcast, which lured people to it. Two: It was the first major console that allowed DVDs to be played without any special add-ons or controllers. Three: It gave publishers a medium for porting. Instead of pouring large quanities of money and time making games that required large amounts of modifying to downgrade and stability for the GCN and Xbox, most instead gave ports some gloss that allowed it to look standard on all 3 major platforms. Four: Both Japanese and American developers supported it. Xbox usually only had US and European developers behind it, while Nintendo had Some of the Japanese developers come back and their own support. Finally: Big name titles: Final Fantasy X, GTA series, Metal Gear Solid series, various new platformers and RPGs were a few examples. -Currently, since Xbox and PS2 console support is dying, PC and 360 are picking up most of the stuff at this point. Now, many games are becoming more powerful and "desirable" on the 360, so the PC is currently the major porting ground. Instead of putting money into major titles for consoles, most seem to be made for the PC and 360 (Due to both being major money makers at this point, and the 360 being able to handle the higher graphical requirements), then downgraded as it goes to each console. If you don't get what I just said: note the major graphical improvements on most multiplatform games. So, in a way, it isn't who has the "major features", but which console has the support of all 3 major gaming markets and can produce not only high quality games, but games that can be ported easily between the other mediums.
The Megadrive was a far more arcade-friendly system, it had a much stronger CPU and was easier to work with. The main criticism of the Megadrive initially was that it had good looking games that were obviously just arcade ports with little depth. I don't get the bit about saves either, arcade games don't have saves at all unless you mean scores. Minimal at best. You were talking about ease of porting games - the PS2 is supposedly a nightmare to code and port games to, so I'm not really seeing your point here. The PS2 won because of the market share guaranteed it by its predecessor, if Sony had come out with Gamecube hardware and Nintendo had come out with PS2 hardware, Nintendo wouldn't have any third party support at all. The platform with the most popular games wins. It rarely has anything to do with superiority of hardware or ease of porting. Look at the most popular PS2 titles: if they had been released on another platform concurrently, why would people opt to buy the PS2 in the first place? Nobody buys a console for multi-platform games, they buy them for the killer apps. Usually, such games are single-platform (at least initially).
Not sure about your porting points on the ps2. Most developers now tend to make things on pc/xbox then port down to gamecube & ps2. Hell practicaly all of ubisoft work is done on the xbox or xbox360 then ported to the other platforms. Ea I belive tend to work on the ps2 and go up but has more been pushing to starting on the pc/xbox then going down. --edit-- Actualy let me clarify that some more. Most USA/Euro developers tend to go with pc/xbox then port from there. Most Jpn developers tend to go with ps2 then port from there. IMO, Japanese code is scarry & a total mess.
Plus the PS2 didn't start up being superior to the Dreamcast. Most launch titles were at par with the DC if anything. It was the promise of future great games (and the DVD Drive) that won people over to the PS2 side. The Dreamcast is by far much more of an arcade system than the PS2. Also, I don't see lots of relevance in Arcade ports this decade. Hyped-up console superproductions. That's where it's at.
Yeah PS2 = Nightmare, a lot of stuff had to be written in assembly to get something decent out of the machine. Why do you think Sony bought SNSytems they are pretty crap nowadays at writing decent programming tools. Good luck with Cell... The Dreamcast had a far more developper friendly kit than PS2. A lot of stuff ported to the PS2 look crap. Some even said that PS2 was a PS1 with bilinear filtering, it's a bit of an overstatement IMO but some games do look shite and have that jaggy look like PS1 games... Thirdy party support is not down to ease of programming at all, Sony has very strong brand name and I'm sure some very good partnership managers, if everything was down to the machine then would have lost the battle a long time ago... Sabre
Add in the fact that Sega didn't exactly have the strongest name in the industry when the PS2 came out... Hell, I remember before the PS2 even came out magazines were reporting that Sega was going to kill the DC early and leave the console industry... too bad Sega had to prove them right.
They didn't kill the DC, they had no money. ;p Generally that forces you to stop. In my opinion Sony has done so well from brand loyalty/previous success and poor competition. Nintendo, Sega, and Microsoft didn't really do all that much. But I think this next go around they should be doing better. Also I heard the big part of the original Playstation's success was that it was "easy" to develop for. Ofcourse this means easier than developing for the Sega Saturn and later N64. It seems they may have forgotten that. PS2 I hear stories of developers talkign to eachother for help as Sony was so unhelpful with development. That's pretty bad. On the other hand they say porting from PC to Xbox 360 is easy which I assume also means developing on Xbox 360 is about as easy as for PC.
In Asia, PS2 by far gets more arcade ports. The only "luck" going for it, is the userbase, which is the apparent choice. It's also got quite a few arcade collections of retro games recently.
I think what he's talking about is the PS2 game is made first, which is then ported to the Xbox and GC. That makes sense actually (that's what happened with the multiplatform games I tested for last year.)
Yeah, thats what I mean. Most games that are multiplatform use the PS2 as a grounds for the textures and poly count, and then port it to other consoles with minor improvements (Pretty much all sports games, GTA games, Most multiplatform games, etc). Granted, I may not know all that much about downporting, but it seems like it would be more of a nightmare to port a game made around the specifications of the Xbox (Conker, Fable, Splinter Cell series), a high end PC game (Half Life 2, Oblivion, Doom 3/Quake 4), and GCN games (Resident evil 4, although that has some major texture and area differences) to the PS2 afterwards instead of getting the PS2 version done first.
