Developers Win
People have been over the last few weeks going nuts over what has potentially been one of the most anticlimactic seasons in technology since I can remember. Both Microsoft and Apple reveal plans for their next generation operating systems. Apple doesn’t release a phone update. E3 is a dismal failure aside from a few key things here and there. The Android market continues to grow, but sadly not on pace with iPhone, and continues to fight amongst the non iPhone using population for market share. And don’t get me started about the world of information security. All arrows are now pointing towards a new revolution. The public has spoken through where it spends its dollars and where it gives praise and where it grows loathsome in woes. Platforms are out, and software content drives the beast now. This is seen most readily at E3 this year as every keynote attacked the idea of a central gaming experience in one place, and pushed a unified gaming experience where content was available dynamically wherever you went. Sony brought the PSVita (which was its stab in the dark attempt at reviving its dead mobile gaming market share), XBox Live sported innovative new collaborative and content sharing tools, Nintendo pushed the ideas of conventional gaming with the Wii, only to find itself sitting in a happy medium place between full abandonment of gaming controllers, and the old days of NES and SNES. All to say… that content wins, and the medium by which we sift through the vast content is what is most important to people.
Now being a gamer now for my whole life, or nearly my whole life… (I watched my older sisters play Mario Brothers on NES when I was just a baby), I can say I am partial to the old ways. Give me stunning content, visuals, an immersive story, and a controller with maybe some shock-ness to it. Don’t give me gimmicky, laggy controllers that I wave around with ridiculous looking colored balls on them, or to-be-updated later-now obselete wii-motes. The complete abandonment of controllers doesn’t suit me either, though that niche has some definite possibilities, and provides the basis for some bleeding edge collaborative gaming tools. It is no longer about the means, more than it is about the content. Whether I sport a PS Move (horribly named), or Microsoft’s Kinect, or use the wii-motion-plus, the idea is to contextualize your experience physically. And in the last two years I’d say there’s been a real drop in quality content, to accommodate the hardware boom that many believe to be the future in gaming. Innovation in this area isn’t really lacking since things keep moving along nicely, but it’s clear that the advent of these technological marvels in gaming has led to poorer and poorer quality in the content that utilizes that technology. And now the cry for quality content is being heard finally. I say… lose the gimmickry and give me an immersive story that is well thought out. Now I’m just one person who loves certain types of games. Needless to say there are those casual gamers who want to turn on their XBox, and play mindless and pointless games and get achievements, pat themselves on the back after playing for 10 minutes.
The whole call to lose the gimmickry and return to the fantastic content that used to drive these platforms is clear. Don’t just give me a shooter with fantastic visuals, but give me a purpose and story behind it that invests me in it. Don’t just give me a flying simulation, or a combat simulation, but give me a purpose and a story behind it that invests me in it. Platforms will continue to evolve promising that the hardware will enhance the gaming experience, but without the following of quality software to back it up, the lost interest will be enough to cripple the industry.
Even within the OS struggle between Microsoft and Apple, the market share is currently 88% Microsoft, and 7% Apple. True enough Apple continues to innovate with its stunning hardware and backs that up with its software platform to work for that hardware. They’ve done what any business would love to be able to do, increase their “perceived value” to be far above the actual value it provides. Forget that Apple software is so proprietary now that the word “open” is used even less than their Microsoft big brother. Forget about the entire argument of OS vs. OS, because at the end of the day it’s going to be content which drives the platform not vice versa. Will developers make games for Windows? Will they make apps for windows? Yes. Will developers make games for Macs… no. Will they make apps for Apple, absolutely yes. What about productivity software? Yes for both. What about development software… not really for Apple, yes for Microsoft. What about secure software environments… LOL, I won’t get into this since I don’t want to appear to flame a company for their complete lack of attention to security. All this to say… there is still a major disparity between what platforms people are willing to work on vs. others. 88% to 7% is indicative of that. But the point is, if there was no disparity between what platforms people were willing to work on, they’d work and develop on both, that goes without saying.
Final Fantasy 13 was released multi platform, and the next iteration of FF13 will also be multi platform. The days of platform dependent software is over. Now, we’re likely not to see Mario jumping around on an XBox, or Zelda slashing around with a gold dusted sword or throwing bombchu’s on a PS3. But even a major developer Square Enix, which has been pridefully sticking by its lame platform partner in Sony understood that it could no longer survive with that sort of strategy. Now, the advance of the Apple app store for example is indicative of content driving the beast. And where Apple dominated the market share for mobile app development for a time, the advent of the Android environment will now start a second competition. As I mentioned before, the ease that developers have on a platform in developing content for that platform will drive the content market share. Apple, now having to share that space with a few platforms will be hard pressed as a platform to keep its developers happy as Android steals some market share, and as other tablets take the scene with similar functionality and quality.
I mean, no one really knows, and though the market seems to be crying out for content more than content delivery systems, the gimmickry may become front and center at some point. Though I am not confident that the professional world or the consumer world is headed in that direction, we’ll probably still see some unneeded level of attention paid to those areas of the hardware or platforms we utilize. It’s not so much a question of Windows 8 vs. Apple’s Lion, or Nintendo’s Wii-U vs. PS’s next generation vs. XBox’s next generation platform. It is more of a question of, who will be willing to write content and solutions for these platforms. There is less of a disparity between developers on XBox vs. PS3 for example, compared to those on Windows vs. OSX which is heavily Windows preferred. For platforms to be competitive they will have to woo developers to the ease of developing on their platform. The gaming market is ahead of the pack when it comes to this realization. The major computing bases will have to follow suit if they wish to survive. The “features” and gimmickry will have to cease since people will be demanding that their desired software runs on the platform they have. Can I justify spending 3000 dollars a Macbook Pro to get the pristine use of gestures and the touchpad response and feel of the OS (which are top notch in Apple’s case) vs. spending 900 dollars for the exact same hardware and get a Microsoft or Linux solution with less refined “feel” but exact same functionality… I don’t know, probably not.
We’ll see what happens!
