Games that release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 are notoriously laborious to update, with red tape by both Microsoft and Sony holding up any software changes. When asked, developers almost universally said they wanted the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft to be more open.
“It’s sometimes expensive, there’s an awful lot of bureaucracy, even when you want to do quite small things,” said David Polfeldt of Ubisoft Massive, the studio behind Far Cry 3‘s multiplayer component. “If I agree with [a suggested fix], I start to think ‘Oh yeah, to change that I would have to — oh shit, it’s just too much work.’ And I won’t change it even if I think [the feedback] is right.”
“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,” agreed Crytek’s global business development director Carl Jones. “We’re always going to need quality control. 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.”
“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,” commented Capcom senior vice president Christian Svensson. “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 back ends 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.”
Source: Gamasutra
