Fascinating Microsoft Interview

[Adrian M]

Uh, Adrian. You're the one who started off with the "personal insults" and "name-calling."

 

What's good for the goose...

 

I did nothing of the sort.

[ZylonBane]

Pie-in-the-sky gibberish. XNA taking off is exactly as probable as everyone switching over to Java-based game consoles.

[ZylonBane]

Oh, and nice how he implies that DOS was the first common operating system. Uhm hello, CP/M anyone?

 

And why can't we edit posts in this forum?

[Fretwobbler]

And why can't we edit posts in this forum?

 

Check the announcements forum.

[sigma]

And why can't we edit posts in this forum?

Didn't you get the memo?

[ZylonBane]

Bah, that'll teach me not to read the Announcements. (hangs head in shame)

[Ze_ro]

This thread is gradually falling apart it seems... which is too bad, because this is potentially a very important subject for the future of video games here.

 

Ah, but another company might come in and consolidate everything. Microsoft, after all, is the "known evil" in the equation, but what if Sony, Nintendo or a party-to-be-named-later decides that an "industry standard" is needed?

 

Although having an industry standard for the video game market would be a great idea from a consumers standpoint, it's a terrible idea for companies like Sony and Nintendo, since they essentially sell their consoles on the quality of the exclusive titles. If all the Final Fantasy fanboys can play FF15 on their XNA-enabled DVD players, then why would they buy a PS4? If you could play Mario Kart 256 on your XNA-enabled computer, then why would you buy a Gametetrahedron?

 

As it is, I can pretty much guarantee you that no matter how well XNA turns out, the chances of Sony or Nintendo incorporating it into future consoles is essentially zero. If suddenly the PS4 and N6 (or whatever silly names they give their consoles) are capable of playing XNA games... then developers will cease making PS4 or N6 specific games in order to create universal XNA games instead, sales of Nintendo and Sony's machines drop substantially due to cheaper brands on the market (sort of like what happened with Apex and other cheap DVD players recently dropping to such low prices), and then they're out of the market.

 

Microsoft's best chance of success would probably be to try to join forces with some of the big Japanese electronics companies that (so far) haven't really gotten into the video game industry. Apex would be a good ally if they could convince them to give up on this ApeXtreme (to the mAxXxXX!) nonsense... Panasonic, Goldstar, Matsushita and others would probably be interested in giving it a go as well (assuming they've forgotten about the whole 3DO debacle). If Microsoft could convince them to make cheap XNA consoles, they might be able to just flood Sony and Nintendo out of the industry.

 

--Zero

[HawgWyld]

I'd argue an industry standard would be horrible for consumers. Competition breeds innovation, and "standards" destroy competition. The very reason Nintendo (as an example) is so mercilessly innovative is because the company must develop exclusive titles for its consoles. The same goes for Microsoft and Sony -- exclusive titles are crucial, and there's real pressure on all three console manufacturers to secure as many as they can for their respective systems. Hence, you've got some fantastic variety available on all three consoles right now, and there's a lot to choose from.

 

That's a situtation I'd love to see continue, frankly.

 

As for the forum falling to pieces, sorry about that. I do tend to get my swipes in when I can.

[mos6507]

The movie analogy breaks down on technological grounds.

 

Movies and sound are simple streams of data. Games are running programs. It's easy to make a movie or album once and keep transcoding it to different formats. It's not easy to port from platform to platform.

 

Even if you write your game completely in C++ or use some kind of cross-platform API, varying amounts of horsepower and other features of each target platform will force the developer to tailor the game specifically for certain platforms.

 

At the very least you will have to write the game two or three times for different classes of hardware.

 

If Microsoft intends to use C# and the .NET runtime as an intermediary device (and I wouldn't be surprised) then it would be interesting to see what kind of performance the final games have.