News Activision: "We may have to stop supporting Sony"

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/06/19/activision-we-may-have-to-stop-supporting-s/1

Activision Blizzard, the largest third party publisher, has said it may stop supporting Sony in the future.

 

Finally, someone standing up to Sony.

God bless Activision Blizzard. I don't think sony can sit on their arrogant throne for much longer. Losing the likes of CoD and Guitar Hero would be unthinkable.

 

good, screw off then. COD sucks compared to mostly every other FPS on the market and GH lost versus Rock Band.

 

Act-Blizz support Macs? Surely PS3 sales are better than Mac sales of their titles? Maybe not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Mac user and I love that we get titles like WoW, StarCraft II and Diablo III at the same time as PC, but I'd assumed that PS3 must sell more than Mac.

 

I don't see how CoD could suck compared to most other FPS games... I could understand if you don't think it's the best, but to say it's the worst, especially on consoles ? That's nonsense

 

^ it normally does. just don;t release trash and sales will be good. And the Xbox 360 isnt selling much better then the PS3 at the moment. 10 - 20k a week more isnt something to be impressed by.

 

PS3 is very expensive to develop for. You literally have to develop the game engine twice: once for Everything and once for PS3. The problem with having different purpose cores, is that they have to be cared for, and that makes coding for PS3 very difficult. The best you can do for porting is just to take advantage of the one general purpose core and ignore the rest, which makes for slow and ugly games.

Sony made an expensive console that's even more expensive for developers. Me thinks Sony lost this round, especially since regular BD players have come down in price now.

 

+1 to that, Sony can't afford to loose them.

 

True, but the Xbox 360 has been on sale a lot longer. This is the bottom of a sales curve for them, but the top for Sony.

 

ssj12 is angry! haha

we keep hearing this time and time again, followed by people claiming the developers are lazy, stupid, their games are crap anyway etc
there has to be something in it if we hear the same thing from developer after developer. Valve said that some of the architecture decisions Sony made were just stupid and counter-productive.
If my job was to create games and a system designed for that purpose was actively causing me trouble, excess cost and stress then i'd want to ditch it as well

 

Care to explain how Electronic Arts has managed to gain the most revenue off selling games on the PS3 then? Activision is the only one complaining about losing money.

Both EA and Capcom has made tons of exclusive content for the PS3 and PSN. They realize they make the most off of Sony's consoles.

The realistic view on the market is that the Xbox 360 and PS3 are both selling poorly versus the Wii. For the cost the PS3 is selling extremely well consider the Xbox 360 arcade is half its price. If Sony dropped the price of the PS3 though it would gain sales but lose any chance at profit for years. Sony is no willing to do this.

 

I have an X360 and PS3, and it's the X360 that gets all the gaming love. 95% of the games I want to play are available on both systems, but I always choose X360 given the choice. I have only 2 games on PS3 compared to around 20 on X360, which I play repeatedly. I just find it more enjoyable, with a greatly superior controller (bar the D-pad).

Having said that, the PS3 does get all the music, TV and film love, but that doesn't really benefit Sony.

 

Actually the Xbox 360's sales have been increasing YOY so it is by far not at the bottom of its sales curve yet. Sony has just been outselling the Xbox 360's past sales which is why the PS3 is about 7.8 million behind the Xbox 360. This sounds like a lot but it by far isn't. Sales are low at the time of the year every year. We are still feeling the post-Christmas, pre-holiday season sales dip.

 

why? most 360 games are on PC. Why get them on console when we all know PC > console gaming.

 

lose - please jump from a high building.

 

Hmm, can anybody say scapegoat..... Activision looking for a fallguy for its poor performance, just last year they were saying how they would have a competitive advantage in the market with PS3 due to strides with proprietary tools from its central technology group that "address the PS3 architecture in efficient ways," and says Call of Duty 4's number one selling status on the platform was proof of its progress.

Looking at their financials the PS3 has been increasing in revenue quarter on quarter they'd only be shooting themselves in the foot if they ahve made this multiplatform 'advantage' to then pull the plug on it.

I say they are full of hot air, they can probably see that the Wii revenues are dropping and know that they could make up the difference with PS3 and can see a lower PS3 price would get more units shifted and its trendy to say the PS3 needs a price cut,

 

Their issue isn't only about which platform sells the most, but how relatively dificult the PS3 is to code.

A mac, a PC and an XBOX 360 are relatively simple to code for. If you have a multiplatform game, it is easy to produce for xbox, pc etc. But porting to the PS3 is almost like creating a whole new game code. This takes time, staff resources and money.

What they are saying is that they could justify going through the hard work of coding for PS3 only IF the sales were on a certain level. So if PS3 games sold as much as xbox 360, then they would be much happier.

Many games these days are multi-core. This is not the issue. However, people should understand the main differences between multi-core coding on the 'general purpose' PC cpus and XBOX cpus compared to the PS3 'non-general purpose' SPE units. The PS3's SPEs are NOT 'cores' they are specialized units that rely on the PS3's single general purpose core.

As usual, Sony have to be different to everyone else, creating a product that is not widely supported. This mentality usually eventually kills their own products. Microsoft, on the other hand, gave developers what they asked for.

 

Thank god Activision-Blizzard are telling arrogant Sony where to go.

PC and 360 Cheesecake!!!

 

Other way round for me Console gaming > PC gaming, I upgraded my PC about 2-3 months back and the only games I've bought for it since then have been DOW2 and Plants vs Zombies.
In the same time frame I've bought a lot more for the 360 and had great fun playing them. Before I would have said it was because my PC wouldn't play 90% of the games I wanted to play but tbh, I think actually sorting games out to play on the PC has become the biggest turn off (ensuring you have the latest drivers, sorting out crashes because of the DRM etc...).

Joe, I posted this in the Games section lunch time - might as well lock it 'cos this thread is more active

 

TBH whenever I am faced with a multiplatform choice, PC wins for me all the time without a single exception.

It doesn't take long to update a driver. In fact, it's almost always unnecessary anyway. My overall gaming experience is greater on PC, such as with higher resolutions, graphics, framerates and up to 16 x AA ( 16 x Q ) .