Justicar Karnellia
Ikomari-Onu Enforcement
Caldari State
55
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Posted - 2013.08.06 12:53:00 -
[1] - Quote
I think a few of the issues have been nailed on the head in the above posts:
- There is an exclusivity contract in there somewhere, and it may involve segregating its presence on current and next-gen consoles. Even though it may not be evident in player numbers, Sony actually use Dust 514 on a lot of marketing. Whenever I go into stores, I see Dust 514 PS3's lining the shelves, and a panoply of other Dust 514 labelled Playstation 3 equipment.
- Most mature games for the PS3 only started to appear a year after the release of its console, once developpers had really started to grasp the potential and the pitfalls of the processor. I think this time around, seeing as they're basing themselves on more common x86 architecture, as opposed to the cell processor, developpers may be able to churn out titles faster. I think this is reflected in the larger number of release titles for PS4 lined up as opposed to the anemic lineup when the PS3 launched.
- If you look closely at the CCP recruitment ads, they ask for experience in Crytek technology as well as Frostbite engines, and of course, the unreal engine. It may be at this time they have not really decided on the next-gen engine they want to model the next ten years one. It must be a really difficult technical debate - they have to find a scalable solution, that plugs into the EVE backbone, and something that can be migrated to without resorting to too much middleware. CCP have always shown that they can contend with unique technical challenges so I'm confident they can deal with this.
All this being said, I'm sure Dust 514 will eventually migrate to PS4, but it will not be at the release of the console, and it will only be about a year after its release, if not more. There will then be a period of co-existence as both consoles (or other platforms that they open up to) will all exist on the same shard. A lot of this will be dictated by market dynamics - If the sales figures of PS4 are amazing, it might force them to push it to the console faster. It might not even be the PS4 but the Xbox one - who knows?
Finally, there is a resource element to be factored in - we don't know if the game is profitable... as the game hasn't been out for a full financial year so we won't have access to the P&L statements just yet to see how much of a profit/loss Dust runs on. My bet is that for the first few years, until the game is mature, it really won't make much of a profit. Until then, dev teams and company resources will remain restrained - it is a business after all and I imagine EVE right now is much more profitable, being one of the last few bastions of monthly subscription MMO's.
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