That's really interesting, so Mr Kojima thinks that Xbox360 and Revolution will be developer-attractive but not so much PS3 due to Sony's pre-rendered E3 hype. Quite a turn around compared to the current gen.

His comments on the Revo appear to support what Nintendo have been saying too.

Remember that a lot of devs were saying the PS2 was hard to program for before it came out, and after, come to think of it. Still made it as the no.1 platform this generation.

Also Epic said that the PS3 was easy to develop for.

With good libraries for the Cell and OpenGL for the graphics, I don't see why devs couldn't be concentrating on the shaders to make games look cool and the gameplay to make them play cool too.


To be honest, he sounded like he was paraphrasing Nintendo there. :-)

Take Epic claiming it is easy to program for with a grain of salt... they have to say that so that their game engine looks attractive to game developers. Even if it was hard they couldn't say so because they'd be shooting themselves in the foot.

are newly established Kojima Productions completely autonomous!?

Why in a world he'd be talking against Sony?

perhaps it's a conspiracy or the way he felt all the way back?

I think that Koijima is refering to price tags when speaks about this, not performance. The PS3 has a lot of hype to live up to, the machine has some *snicker* impressive specifications to the under informed. When developers finally sit down with the unit, they'll find that the ability to do more dust particles than they could on the Xbox 360 means extremely little to the actual gaming community.

The price tags though are the main thing. PS3 games will have more voice actors to hire, more to worry about in terms of development and use. The Xbox 360 already has the benefit of XNA, and lowered expectations. They won't have to spend as much. Nintendo's Revolution allows companies to make profits in many new ways.

For example: Namco could work on a new Bomberman game, and also release their one NES, three SNES, and two N64 Bomberman games for $1 to $5 each as downloads. Or they could offer a coupon code with the purchase of a new Revolution Bomberman game that allows you to get the NES and either two of the SNES or one of the N64 ones for free. That way they can maximize profits off of a pre-existing catalogue. The ability to revitalize older non-profitable game software as a "new" downloadable (and profitable) medium is too sexy for sales. Would you pay $10 for the ability to download Final Fantasy 6 to your Revolution? How about getting a discount on FF6 when you buy Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles? See how that works?

In the accessory market, the term given to an easy to create product with maximum sales margins and ready utility is a: "Popcorn Product." Popcorn products being items like screen protectors for the PSP, stylus products for the Nintendo DS, and faceplates for the Game Boy Micro & Xbox 360. Easy to make, easy to sell. Nintendo is hoping to create "Popcorn Games" with this next generation.

He could also be refering to the attitudes each company has on games. For example: Nintendo has let N-Space work on Geist for HOW long? Microsoft has even let companies like Rare miss whole generations. Sony has a history of forcing out games.

I liked his meal comparison, but he's a bit unclear with it.

Sony is a fine resturant that requires reservations.
Microsoft is McDonalds.
Nintendo is your local grocery store.

There we go, Koijima explained! Now he can go back to working on Boktai 3.