Depends but likely difficult (Gaming)

by yakaman, Monday, August 10, 2020, 11:45 (1355 days ago) @ marmot 1333

This is true. There are also two trends that has made this less of an issue over time.

One is that hardware has become more similar--like the change from PS3's RISC architecture to PS4's x86-64 architecture, which both Xbox and PCs use. Apple has used x86 for a while but I believe they recently announced a change in architecture (not sure of the details on that).

At the same time, there have been multiple software development kits with an eye towards multiplatform support. (Monogame is one such example.).

That being said, sometimes there are just weird quirks, like how during OG Destiny development the PS4 consistently had frame hiccups when playing video like the intro cinematic which none of the other platforms had.

None of this is to negate that multi-platform development is harder than single platform; it just happens to be less hard now than it was in the past.

Just speculate: if a AAA game costs 1 unit to develop (let's call it 50 people full time for 3 years, whatever, 150 man-years), is it like a 10% effort to do what you (and BlackTiger) have described? Like, 1 unit to make on XBox, 1.05 units to port to PC, 1.15 units to port to PS, 1.20 units to port to switch).

I want a future in which people choose platforms by preference (i.e. which controller, which games service, where friends are, etc) rather than exclusives. I know exclusives help get games funded, but I feel like exclusivity - while beneficial in some narrow scopes - has had an adverse impact on gaming in general.

For example, Spider-Man being an exclusive on PS for the new Avengers game because Sony owns the right to Spider-Man. I know why it is the way it is - I just wish it weren't so.