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A comment on The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStation 4. Parent comment

Re:The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStati... by sp332 on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @02:19PM (#5752757)
Exactly, the developer experience is very important, and hardware is only an issue if you're really pushing the limits. Differences in SDK made a huge difference in popularity between the PS3 and the 360. Since the 360 handled background music, matchmaking, and voice chat natively, devs had a huge head start over competitors on the PS3. Helping out the devs had a direct effect on the players' experience, which led to the 360's dominance in multiplayer games.
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Re:The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStati... by UnoriginalGuy on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @04:27PM (#5753476)
Tangent: In addition to that, I think this generation might be defined by how well each console opens up to smaller/indie developers.

Modern day indie developers are making products which we would have called AAA games in 1998 and many of them are selling extremely well (just see Kickstarter). I think they have a HUGE role to play this generation, and holding them hostage in the "app" sandbox will be a massive mistake.

If either Microsoft or Sony opened up their SDK to indie developers, and created some kind of arrangement where these developers could sell digitally for a fee, I think they will effectively "win" this round. And I do not mean "apps." I mean full power of the console level stuff.

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Re:The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStati... by tracker1 on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @03:45PM (#5753263)
Yeah.. but it does look like MS is backpedaling in support of indie devs for the XBox One.
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Re:The Xbox One: Hardware Analysis & Comparison to PlayStati... by rbanffy on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @04:57PM (#5753663)
OTOH, it seems developing for the One will be easy. At least, as easy as developing for Windows.

Although I personally have little love for Visual Studio, most Windows developers would never leave it.

Were it programmable in Lisp, I suppose developers would use it to read e-mail and chat on IRC ;-)

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