Vakinox: Exclusives are a reason to
buy a console, not develop for it. As a game designer, interesting new technology and new ways to interact with the game world are what excite me. The Xbox and PS4 are utterly unappealing to me as a designer.
On the one hand, you've got Kinect, which is neat in theory, but since you can't practically use a controller and Kinect at the same time, the two control methods are segregated -- if you're using Kinect you have to put the controller down, meaning no buttons, no nothing, just your body. If you're using the controller, you can't be waving your hands around and jumping all over the place, meaning no motion controls. This is supported by the fact that no major, "epic" sort of game uses Kinect for anything but its voice chat feature; all Kinect titles are gimmickey bargin-bin titles.
On the other hand you've got PS4's touchpad thingy on its controller and Eye Toy, or whatever it's called this gen. Eye Toy has a leg up on Kinect since it can detect the controller; indeed it seems more intended to be a Wiimote than a Kinect ripoff (though the original Eye Toy was released far before the original Kinect, IIRC). But pointing and such with a standard controller is wonky at best. And the touchpad thing is neat, but anything I could do with that I could do with a touch
screen, and more.
When the Wii U GamePad was unveiled, it got my creative blood pumping. I look at an Xbox or a Playstation and I think about the games I could design for it, and it's just standard stuff. I look at the GamePad and the ideas just come rushing. There so, so, so much cool stuff I could do with the GamePad that would be impossible on the other consoles, and probably technically possible on PC, but ridiculously difficult.
And actually, Ninty has a super-open third-party thing going on this gen...
https://wiiu-developers.nintendo.com/signup/Radnen: I'm speaking as a game designer, not an insecure teenage console fanboy :p -- sales numbers don't interest me. I'm far, far more interested in making exactly the kind of game I want, using the neatest, funnest tech available, than in sales numbers and potential revenue and "install bases."
It's precisely that sort of attitude that's killing the industry. And why indie games are doing so well -- the industry is soulless and creatively stagnant. The only thing the big-name companies can churn out these days are carbon-copy FPS games and yearly sports franchise releases.
*sigh*
Fanboydom is causing problems, too. Everyone's so numbers-obsessed, it creates the perception that an innovative console like the Wii U is undevelopable due to much fewer console sales than its competitors, so money-obsessed developers and investors flock like chickens to wherever the sales are the highest, giving no thought to creativity or artistic expression.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not wearing rose-tinted glasses, I understand that its the money that drives the industry, and I acknowledge that concern about sales and making money is 100% legitimate. But when it becomes an
obsession, it becomes a problem.
And it's a self-sustaining cycle. Big-name companies have hundreds of employees to pay, patents and legal stuff to worry about, etc. so they have to try and make as much money as possible no matter the cost just to stay in business. Comparably, indie developers consisting of just a half dozen or so people can afford to spend more time making more artistic, less-obviously-marketable titles because even a modest amount of money goes a lot farther when divided among a half dozen dudes than a huge amount of money goes divided among a company of hundreds.
So the big-name companies keep churning out soulless, marketable crap on the consoles with the largest "install bases" (I feel dirty just saying that) and the indie developers keep making all the best games, though also mostly for the large-install-base consoles, because of course, the majority of indie games don't actually sell that well. We all think of Minecraft and Spelunky when we think indie games, but most are nowhere near that popular.
But yeah. Point is, I'm not like any of that nonsense. What gets me going is new ways of interacting with games, not technical specs of RAM and GPU or whatever, and not sales numbers or whatever other buzzwords fanboys fling around all the time.
(Heh, 5.3 million limit. If one of my games sold 5.3 million I would literally be set for life. I live a very simple, modest life.)