When Did Third Party Developers Become So Lazy About Porting?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I originally started writing this post for the Nintendo, What Went Wrong thread, but after further consideration it seems like a big enough subject on it's own to warrant a separate thread. I think a lot of Nintendo's problems in recent years aren't due so much to bad design and marketing decisions on their part (though there's no denying that the Wii U had significant problems in both categories) but just due to the fact that third party developers have become extraordinarily lazy.

 

Up until this latest console generation developers always produced versions of the same game for multiple consoles with different architecture if they wanted to sell their game on more than one platform. The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis saw many ports of games between the two systems, as did the N64, GameCube, Wii and their console competitors. Heck, I remember when every developer and sundry was trying to port their home console titles of the time to the Game Boy Advance; often with strikingly creative and remarkably good results. It was like the developers were genuinely enjoying the challenge of trying to rebuild their games from the ground up for a less powerful system, and revisiting some of those GBA ports again it's plain to see how much heart and soul went into the projects.

 

But for this current console generation the mentality of third party developers has shifted drastically to a, well... just plain lazy view on porting. These days it seems like most third party developers are only interested in making video games for PC and will only port those games to a home console if they can do it without having to change or rework any aspects of the game for different hardware. Heck, the Vice President of Bethesda Softworks flat out said this to be the case in a recent interview when asked about the possibility of Bethesda releasing their games on the upcoming Nintendo NX.

 

So what I'm wondering is at what point did developer attitudes communally change from being excited and happy about making different versions of their games for different system architectures too this staunchly lazy approach of only developing for one hardware platform and then only porting their games to other systems if it wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience for them? And what prompted this rather drastic change of philosophy across the board?

 

I'd be interested in hearing what you guys and gals think on the matter.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Jin

[Schizophretard]

I think maybe it was because in the past it was absolutely necessary to create enough ports to get enough users. Think back when everyone didn't have a PC, most PC's were desktops, there was no Steam, it was impractical to have digital downloads because of everyone having dial-up if that, no smart phones or tablets to compete with handhelds, etc. Today just putting a game on Steam, PS4, and XBOX ONE would already be more people than if they ported to every single gaming capable device from back in the day. Also, since those three platforms are pretty much mandatory for a AAA studio to successful they don't have to develop a game with mid-range specs to be able to be ported from say a Game Boy Advance up to everything else but can design their game starting from the highest specs and port their way down to only what they need to. But for developers that aren't AAA like indies they may still have to try to port to as many platforms as possible and can afford to take risks because for them it is either give your best or get destroyed by competitors.

[Newsdee]

It was probably a consequence of development costs having increased a lot with 3D gaming, high quality audio, and more demanding players/customers wanting a decent story and gameplay.

 

More powerful machines meant that programmers can basically put together a custom toolkit "ecosystem" for all the other non-technical users. All of that would have to be rewritten for each target platform.

 

Also in some cases you might need to cater for specifics of a system e.g. a 2nd screen or smaller display which adds rework for everybody.

 

The execs probably looked at the licensing costs of using a new system, plus the extra work, and decided it wasn't worth the effort compared to spending more in making the game better for core platforms.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Newsdee

[HammR25]

There's a lot more money to be made on consoles than the PC so I'm not sure why any developer would ever do that. I guess it depends which game genre you're talking about and the size of the studio. There hasn't been a Madden football game on the PC since 2008 because they aren't worth the trouble. The PC version of AAA games have typically been console ports and plenty of those ports have been terrible for the past couple of generations of consoles. Heck, 9 months ago the PC version of Batman Arkham Knight was so bad Warner Brothers offered people refunds multiple times.

 

I think most of the games that start out on Steam start there because they treat it as a test market before going to consoles. Part of the allure of doing this is Valve doesn't charge developers to release patches. They also allow developers to release as many patches as they want whenever they want so this is a much lower barrier to entry. While Farsight started their games on consoles first their Steam version of The Pinball Arcade is a perfect example of why the PC version of a game could be a lot better than the console versions. They can patch the Steam version whenever they want and get feedback from their Steam customers on what they screwed up then fix it quickly. The Steam version is now easily the best version of their game. When they release on consoles they're charged a lot of money to release those patches and those patches also have to go through Microsoft and Sony QA first. This forces Farsight to think long and hard before releasing new content on consoles.

I doubt any of it is being lazy, especially in an industry that's notorious for it's overtime practices. It's more likely they simply ran out of budgeted money and need to release the game to bring in more.

[Deep_wolf]

It's all about moneyyy. They not lazy, they just don't have enough money. The most important word here is - enough.

 

Quite a few indie devs are trying to reach as many platforms as possible, because it's our top priority as creators - to deliver product to massive audience.

 

Another big thing here is that technologies are now all blending together, where differences in between the consoles and PC are so low, they don't even matter anymore. Times of 16 bit consoles are gone, you can't bring it back.

 

Lets count how many game consoles and devices there are today: PC, MAC, LUNIX, PS3, PS4, X360, XONE, VITA and 3DS. That's it. Everything except last two can handle the same graphics. VITA gets some chopped off ports, as well as 3DS.

 

And again, it's all takes money to publish. That's why lots of devs looking into Steam, indieDB and such.

[Flojomojo]

^^ I think that's well put. I think it's unfair to use the word "lazy" when talking about software development, as if they don't have the same triple constraints of money/time/scope as any other project.

 

The "lazy" characterization is especially irksome when much of the fanbase will bitch about what they see as "expensive" pricing ($8 SNES games on New 3DS and $15 PS2 games on PS4 come to mind).

 

It's not like they go home early or have a great work-life balance as it is, see all the stories characterizing EA as a software sweatshop.

 

Are you willing to fund beautiful bespoke ports to poorly selling systems like Wii U? It's economics, not laziness. I suppose you could also say it's greed, but I think that's hard to argue when you take the sales figures of poorly selling games into account when looking at margins on mega hit games.

 

Jin, can you find another word? What is it you really want to see? More high quality third party games on Wii U and eventually NX regardless of market conditions?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Jin, can you find another word? What is it you really want to see? More high quality third party games on Wii U and eventually NX regardless of market conditions?

I definitely understand Deep_wolf's explanation regarding small third party companies, because for many smaller developers I'm sure that it is very much a matter of financial constraints. And in spite of those constraints you do still see a lot of small third party companies releasing games on a variety of different platforms, which ia great (or at least it would be great if they released them on physical media rather than as digital downloads, but that's another subject altogether).

 

What I'm talking about when I refer to developer laziness is the big name companies like EA, Activision, Bethesda, Square Enix, and the like who are practically drowning in money and could easily afford to put together teams to create ports of their popular games for "non-stanard" hardware like the Wii U, Vita, and 3DS. It sure seems like for most of the history of home game consoles it was the standard normal thing for the big budget developers with a lot of cash to throw around to create ports of their popular games for most if not all of the systems on the market, handhelds included, regardless of the system's hardware capabilities. If they had to make an entirely different version of the game from the ground up to suit lower powered hardware then they did, and it wasn't something that anyone thought twice about.

 

All I'd like is to see the major game publishers put the same level of work into making their popular titles accessible across all platforms that they used to. And maybe to start actually playtesting their games like they did before consoles had online connectivity, to get their games finished and properly debugged before they go to market so that the people who buy them don't have to download and install update patches every other week. That would be nice too.

[teh_lurv]

Everyone has already said economics not laziness, but also

 

What I'm talking about when I refer to developer laziness is the big name companies like EA, Activision, Bethesda, Square Enix, and the like who are practically drowning in money and could easily afford to put together teams to create ports of their popular games for "non-stanard" hardware like the Wii U, Vita, and 3DS. It sure seems like for most of the history of home game consoles it was the standard normal thing for the big budget developers with a lot of cash to throw around to create ports of their popular games for most if not all of the systems on the market, handhelds included, regardless of the system's hardware capabilities. If they had to make an entirely different version of the game from the ground up to suit lower powered hardware then they did, and it wasn't something that anyone thought twice about.

 

 

Big companies like EA or Activision aren't really drowning in money when each AAA title today costs around 100 million dollars to create. A single game can potentially make or break a company. I understand your frustration, but there is no sound business sense to porting games to platforms like the Wii U or Vita if the profit isn't there.

[Bill Loguidice]

I can't fault publishers on this one. Development costs are high these days and if they're not convinced they'll sell enough on a platform like the Wii U or Vita, then it makes perfect sense for them to avoid them. Even with a lot of games built on the same engines and versions of those engines being available on multiple platforms, there's still work involved. It's also easier if a game is digital only, which is why you still see indie games more often than bigger budget games on weaker selling platforms.

 

Frankly, that's going to be the biggest challenge for the NX, i.e., to prove that it's worth porting games to. Naturally, at launch, it will have a selection of third party games. If those games sell well enough, then more third party games will follow. If they don't, then you'll have the same situation that the Wii U was in. No one wants that I would think, but if the market realities make it so, I'd be hard-pressed to fault the publishers. Like any business, they're in it to make, not lose money.

[Flojomojo]

What I'm talking about when I refer to developer laziness is the big name companies like EA, Activision, Bethesda, Square Enix, and the like who are practically drowning in money and could easily afford to put together teams to create ports of their popular games for "non-stanard" hardware like the Wii U, Vita, and 3DS.

That's a lot of assumptions, and as others have pointed out, I think you might be trying to apply the business practices of many years ago (SNES and Genesis for example) to the current market, which is much more crowded.

 

No one has mentioned mobile, which Square Enix has attempted to support with varying degrees of success. They have NOT kept up the required support for many of their big-league franchises on iOS, even though they charge premium prices on the platform. They've abandoned semi-popular franchises like Chaos Rings. It's disappointing as a fan, but again, it's just business. Maybe they ARE drowning in money and are just mismanaging it. That's still not "laziness," though. They've done some innovative things with Lara Croft GO (and Hitman Go and Deus Ex GO) exclusively to mobile, and these are great.

 

Bethesda has never made a Mac port of Elder Scrolls. Lazy, or smart? (Personally, I'd rather see an Elder Scrolls game on iPhone, get your torches and pitchforks everyone)

 

EA used to make premium games on mobile. Now they've scaled it back to free-to-play games. Lazy, or profit-seeking?

 

Activision? I stopped caring about them after cartridges became a thing, but do you really want Call of Duty on 3DS?

 

There are plenty of cross-platform developers who put the same thing on lots of devices. The developers of Mutant Mudds, the Lego games, Retro City Rampage, Shovel Knight, Crashlanders, and a few others come to mind. I think it's cool, but many gamers think it's shovelware when that happens, that they're not taking advantage of the power of their specific pet platform. Everyone pisses on Ubisoft/Gameloft for being multiplatform for some reason.

 

TL;DR can't please everyone and $$$

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Bethesda has never made a Mac port of Elder Scrolls. Lazy, or smart? (Personally, I'd rather see an Elder Scrolls game on iPhone, get your torches and pitchforks everyone)

 

Well, they did put out an Elder Scrolls game for the Nokia N-Gage. Not quite what you were looking for, but it is a mobile phone platform.

 

Activision? I stopped caring about them after cartridges became a thing, but do you really want Call of Duty on 3DS?

 

Absolutely. I played all the Call of Duty games for the original DS (Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare Mobilized, Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops, and World at War) and totally loved them. Needless to say I was pretty disappointed when Activision decided not to release a single Call of Duty game for the 3DS, after the 5 great ports that they did for the original DS.

 

I do get your (and everyone else who have chimed in to this thread) points though. The big name publishers these days only pay their developers to make games that they are sure will make a profit, and if they don't think that they can make a profit from developing an entirely new scaled down version of a popular game for a lower powered console then they just aren't going to do it. They also aren't going to take the time to properly play test and debug their games anymore because then they would have to pay large teams of testers to do it, and that would cut into their profits and push back release dates when they can just put the game out before it's been fully tested then release downloadable patches later to fix all the problems with it. It sucks, but that's just the way that the corporate greed machine works.

 

The PC, Xbox One, and PS4 get all the big third party games because they all use similar hardware so the developers only have to make the game once rather than remaking it for different systems (again, saving money) and any other systems that aren't a financially safe bet to develop for get screwed. Hooray for modern gaming.

 

 

TL;DR I've got my knickers in a twist and am complaining on the internet because I can't play scaled down ports of the newest Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, and Doom games on the 3DS. Also, smartphones, Steam, and high speed internet connections on consoles have ruined modern gaming by allowing publishers to cut costs by releasing games digitally rather than on physical media and put out update patches rather than properly play test their games before release. That is all.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Jin

[Flojomojo]

I remember writing letters as a young person to Parker Brothers, Imagic, and Activision begging them to put their games on the Odyssey 2 because that's what I had. They sent me politely worded letters thanking me for my interest and stating that there simply weren't enough buyers for them to do this. Same thing here, right? Presumably Activision learned from putting five (!) CoD games on the teeny weeny DS! I feel the same way about Star Wars games on the 3DS. At least there's Lego, I suppose.

 

This is why I reflexively buy all the game consoles nowadays, "just in case" there's something cool I don't want to miss.

This is also why I love retro games. You can't play everything when it's new, but you can always go back. Who needs a port of Doom to the 3DS when you can play the real thing on a $75 laptop or the GBA version on a GBA?

 

Also see: Disney Infinity. Disney is rich, right? And they have all these great characters! And they put the game out on everything. Then they pulled it all, to some shouting, but a lot of indifference. I'll bet their accountants were happy. http://screenrant.com/why-disney-infinity-was-cancelled/

[ZylonBane]

Think back when everyone didn't have a PC, most PC's were desktops, there was no Steam, it was impractical to have digital downloads because of everyone having dial-up if that, no smart phones or tablets to compete with handhelds, etc.

 

Downloads have always been digital. I "digitally" downloaded things on my 8-bit Atari.

[akator]

This was a problem on the PSP about 10 years ago. For a few years there were many PS2 titles ported to the PSP without modifying the controls to work comfortably on the PSP. Many of these games also suffered from poor performance and graphics issues, problems which appeared to be a lack of optimization/modification for the PSP platform. The results were flawed gaming experiences leading to an overall drop in the general opinion of the platform. Years later that improved with a surge in good games optimized for the system, but those years of crappy PS2 ports definitely hurt the system.

[godslabrat]

Game developers have always acted like customers were expecting too much and should just take whatever they're given. The multitude of console options today just gives them a different justification.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I remember writing letters as a young person to Parker Brothers, Imagic, and Activision begging them to put their games on the Odyssey 2 because that's what I had. They sent me politely worded letters thanking me for my interest and stating that there simply weren't enough buyers for them to do this. Same thing here, right? Presumably Activision learned from putting five (!) CoD games on the teeny weeny DS! I feel the same way about Star Wars games on the 3DS. At least there's Lego, I suppose.

 

This is why I reflexively buy all the game consoles nowadays, "just in case" there's something cool I don't want to miss.

This is also why I love retro games. You can't play everything when it's new, but you can always go back. Who needs a port of Doom to the 3DS when you can play the real thing on a $75 laptop or the GBA version on a GBA?

 

Also see: Disney Infinity. Disney is rich, right? And they have all these great characters! And they put the game out on everything. Then they pulled it all, to some shouting, but a lot of indifference. I'll bet their accountants were happy. http://screenrant.com/why-disney-infinity-was-cancelled/

 

Points accepted and argument conceded. I will now cease my lamentations over the state of gaming on the 3DS and go enjoy the abundance of small screen first-person shooter ports on it's predecessor.

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Jin

[Flojomojo]

Points accepted and argument conceded. I will now cease my lamentations over the state of gaming on 3DS and go enjoy the abundance of small screen first-person shooter ports on it's predecessor.

 

Nintendo should make a new 3DS with a GBA slot that allows the cartridges to slot all the way in. Overhang is yucky.

 

(personally, I think cartridges are pretty yucky too, but I've recently rediscovered my GBA SP and it's kinda neat, in a way, to be forced to pay attention to one game at a time.)

[godslabrat]

I'd just love a new Nintendo portable that supported Gameboy, but I know that's wishful thinking.

[Flojomojo]

I'd just love a new Nintendo portable that supported Gameboy, but I know that's wishful thinking.

 

I think the new Mario bundle is as close as it's going to get from Nintendo itself. $150 with a good game bundled, plus access to the eShop. The folding hinge is so much nicer than the 2DS, and since it's a New 3DS, it can play SNES, Xenoblade, and Binding of Isaac. If I didn't have a neglected red N3DSXL already, I'd be jumping all over this.

[Schizophretard]

 

Downloads have always been digital. I "digitally" downloaded things on my 8-bit Atari.

 

I know. I just pick up redundant phrases from things like digital copies, ATM machines, etc. and then use them out of habit.

[StopDrop&Retro]

I think you're giving port jobs from the past too much credit. When you go back to the 8 and 16 bit eras the ports varied wildly in quality across systems. Just compare the ports from Genesis to SNES, almost no ported games there are equal to each other aside from some sports titles.

 

There's been a lot of publicity lately about bad port jobs and which platform has "the definitive port" and I blame a lot of that on over sensationalism from outlets such as Digital Foundry. When I see them compare two games and one has a little bit of frame drop or a longer loading time, I feel the difference wasn't even worth making a video about unless they were trying to prove that it's a great port job that both would be happy with. There are some bad porting jobs these days like Shadow of Mordor (PS3) or No Man's Sky (PC) but they're few and far between when you look at the vast landscape of current games where everything seems to be multiplat unless it's on WiiU.

[Shawn]

I originally started writing this post for the Nintendo, What Went Wrong thread, but after further consideration it seems like a big enough subject on it's own to warrant a separate thread. I think a lot of Nintendo's problems in recent years aren't due so much to bad design and marketing decisions on their part (though there's no denying that the Wii U had significant problems in both categories) but just due to the fact that third party developers have become extraordinarily lazy.

 

Up until this latest console generation developers always produced versions of the same game for multiple consoles with different architecture if they wanted to sell their game on more than one platform. The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis saw many ports of games between the two systems, as did the N64, GameCube, Wii and their console competitors. Heck, I remember when every developer and sundry was trying to port their home console titles of the time to the Game Boy Advance; often with strikingly creative and remarkably good results. It was like the developers were genuinely enjoying the challenge of trying to rebuild their games from the ground up for a less powerful system, and revisiting some of those GBA ports again it's plain to see how much heart and soul went into the projects.

 

But for this current console generation the mentality of third party developers has shifted drastically to a, well... just plain lazy view on porting. These days it seems like most third party developers are only interested in making video games for PC and will only port those games to a home console if they can do it without having to change or rework any aspects of the game for different hardware. Heck, the Vice President of Bethesda Softworks flat out said this to be the case in a recent interview when asked about the possibility of Bethesda releasing their games on the upcoming Nintendo NX.

 

So what I'm wondering is at what point did developer attitudes communally change from being excited and happy about making different versions of their games for different system architectures too this staunchly lazy approach of only developing for one hardware platform and then only porting their games to other systems if it wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience for them? And what prompted this rather drastic change of philosophy across the board?

 

I'd be interested in hearing what you guys and gals think on the matter.

 

Most games are written for all 3 (PS, XBOX & PC) at the same time with a shared interest in most of the code between them so I have no clue what you are talking about and I don't think you do either.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Most games are written for all 3 (PS, XBOX & PC) at the same time with a shared interest in most of the code between them so I have no clue what you are talking about and I don't think you do either.

Well that was unnecessarily rude, especially when I said the exact same thing about how big budget third party games are developed these days as you did. They're almost all made with PC architecture in mind and because the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One use very PC-like hardware they get ports of the games (since it requires little to no work porting games to those systems), while the systems that do require substantial work to port to (such as the Wii U, 3DS, and Vita) usually get left in the dust.

 

But, as many have already said, it all comes down to money. The Xbox One and PS4 are cheap and easy to port to, as well as safe bets in terms of sales numbers, so they're the consoles that get all the big third party games.

[Newsdee]

Nowadays it's become more obvious since the PS4 and Xbone are built around PC architecture. Even arcades started to be closer to PCs since some years ago.

 

In the old days you had companies like Nintendo providing very expensive dev kits, PCs with custom hardware that allowed to test games on a NES. Nowadays it would be hard to convince a developer to pay for that, and more practical to charge some kind of license instead.

 

On top of that you have companies like ID or Unity selling a game engine, outsourcing the gritty technical details to them so game development teams can just focus on gameplay (at least that's the pitch). It makes sense; optimizing for hardware is hard and it won't give your game an edge over the competition if the game mechanics are broken.

[JamesD]

This is nothing recent. Look at titles ported to multiple 8 bit machines in the 80s.
Some machines had excellent ports, and others looked thrown together.