As console developers start looking to the future, many have expressed desires that Sony and Microsoft’s next offerings allow for more open development.
With PC games, developers can quite easily and inexpensively release content updates and bug fixes, but the same isn’t true for console titles, where making changes often requires a lot of hoop-jumping. This in turn can have a negative impact on the actual quality of the product console owners are getting.
David Polfeldt of Ubisoft Massive explains, “It’s sometimes expensive, there’s an awful lot of bureaucracy, even when you want to do quite small things.”
“If I agree with [a suggested fix], I start to think ‘Oh yeah, to change that I would have to — oh sh*t, it’s just too much work.’ And I won’t change it even if I think [the feedback] is right.”
Global business development director of Crytek Carl Jones also chimed in, saying, “I think that’d be really helpful [if the consoles were more open], because certainly we’re seeing a change in models in games toward more freemium content, and a quicker response to your community.
“We’re always going to need quality control,” he added. “We’re going to need a decent submission process, to get the first version of a game out, and make sure it’s solid and everyone gets a good experience. But during that period, if developers can be generating content that they know they can shoot out really quickly, on demand, well, I think the tail of that game becomes longer, the overall revenue from that game becomes higher, and everybody wins.”
Senior VP of Capcom, Christian Svensson, also agreed, “I’m hoping for a much more fluid means of providing updates to consumers, being able to have a much more rapid turnaround in between when content is submitted and when content goes live to consumers, to provide a higher level of service to them.
“I’m hoping that the networking and the processes in the future are built with that in mind. I’d like to see more server-based backends that are more under publisher-developer control, rather than being forced through systems that are bit more pre-defined by the first-party. That would enable experiences online that are not currently available in today’s console marketplace.”
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Maybe I’m just a bitter cynic but this sounds a lot like, “We’d really like to shift more of the burden of QA from us to the user. It saves us tons of money and we feel there really aren’t enough completely broken day-0 games on console for our liking. It’ll also allow us to ship in time for the holidays regardless of whether or not it’s a pile of stinky poo.”