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[Amir0x]

Personally, I wouldn't consider time to be nearly as big a factor as things such as the nature of the offense, the apparent motivation behind it, and recidivism. Fool me once, shame on me; fool me continuously for more than four decades, in market after market…

See Sony's been involved in some really nasty shit, so then my question would be how do you gauge the severeness of the "nature of the offense" for you?

 

[Papacheeks]

What happened to alexandros?

He brought it on himself. It just took this thread to see how he comes into threads about platforms he doesn't care about and shit's it up with his own PC-ELITE Linux Free attitude.

He's a smart guy to talk to about PC related thread's, but tends to go off the deep end in Console based ones.

 

[serversurfer]

and can be boiled down to "Xbox policy => Xbox problems". We can both agree on this, no? The purpose of the clause is to strongarm developers into supporting Xbox equally, thus potentially affecting the market at large. It constantly backfiring on Microsoft tells me it's not fulfilling this purpose. We can agree on this too, right?

Would you support forced parity if it was being effective in retarding development on other platforms?

I did.

"The way it works is developers must give release date and feature parity for multiplatform releases or release on Xbox first"

Wouldn't "feature parity" imply quality / modes / etc.?

Seems to me that resolution and graphics in general would be one of the features causing people to choose PS4 over XBone, yes. The clause is somewhat vague, so it's Microsoft's discretion to decide what's allowed on other platforms.

Yes Microsoft requires release date parity along with feature parity. That just means that if Shovel Knight was releasing on XBO and PS4 even if they were releasing on the same day if the PS4 version had Kratos and the XBO version had no extra boss it would be failing their parity requirement. The problem isn't that they are requiring both versions to be the same it's that they have to come out at the same time or first on XBO otherwise it is a no go.

That actually brings up a fairly interesting point. There's nothing particularly onerous about asking for parity in and of itself. Again, it's really all about implementation and execution.

Let's say Shovel Knight was coming to XBone with Master Chief as a boss, and Sony say, "Hold on, we need feature and content parity here." The dev says, "Sure, no problem, we'll put Kratos in the PS version." Then Sony say, "Sorry, but we don't allow third parties to incorporate our IPs." The dev says, "Okay, so…" "So, you need to remove Master Chief from the XBox version."

That would be an example of a terrible implementation of an inherently benign policy. A few devs have indicated MS veto features on PlayStation which are impossible or simply disallowed on XBox, but I've heard no such accusations leveled against Sony, though it's entirely possible and even likely they request devs deliver parity wherever feasible.

It was last September so it's a little hazy, and it may have been a condition of the Greenshoots programme. Which is understandable if they help with match funding.

Fair enough. What's Greenshoots? Are you able to tell us anything about it?

but as I said they were pretty nice about it all.

I've no doubt it's all wine and roses over there … for now. Anyway, sign here; we can revisit parity later.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

What happened to alexandros?

I don't know. I've just had a look over his previous comments and I don't see anything banworthy in there.

 

[serversurfer]

Well, Sony isn't quite no barriers--probably the lowest barriers on a major console (I can't imagine Nintendo's are better but I don't know the specifics, they're much better now though), but they still have certification, still have requirements like trophies, still have a cert for patches (allegedly Binding of Isaac's patch in the EU is held up by SCEE--it's Nicalis though, who knows with them).

The only no-barriers stores are PS Mobile (to an almost embarrassing degree) and that's Vita/PS TV only, and some PC shops like itch.io. Steam isn't really no barriers, it's a weird sort of "appease the greenlight gods and then we'll let you do whatever you want". Embarrassingly I've seen games hit Playstation/Nintendo before Steam on a few occasions.

Fair enough. I don't typically equate platform curation with "barriers to entry," but yes, I suppose they technically are. Personally, I tend to prefer a well-curated platform, but to each, his own. /shrug

See Sony's been involved in some really nasty shit, so then my question would be how do you gauge the severeness of the "nature of the offense" for you?

Could you be more specific?

I don't know. I've just had a look over his previous comments and I don't see anything banworthy in there.

I kinda felt the same. He was being civil, if a bit stubborn and wrongheaded. Perhaps it was the evasiveness and goalpost-moving? /shrug

 

[Crimson_Gold]

See Sony's been involved in some really nasty shit, so then my question would be how do you gauge the severeness of the "nature of the offense" for you?

I tend to see more of the overall MS culture being a part of the Xbox division. Each of Sony's divisions seem to operate as separate entities for better or worse. Thus you'll get very different philosophies for SCE vs Sony Pictures. The Xbox division is using traditional MS practices that are very anticompetitive and anti-consumer. The DRM scheme was a playbook. See the windows phone home policy. The Sony rootkit scandal was awful, but that type of behavior has not been seen in the PlayStation division at all. I think that's why Xbox gets lumped into the evil Microsoft argument, while PlayStation has been unscathed by most of Sony's blunders.

 

[serversurfer]

I tend to see more of the overall MS culture being a part of the Xbox division. Each of Sony's divisions seem to operate as separate entities for better or worse. Thus you'll get very different philosophies for SCE vs Sony Pictures. The Xbox division is using traditional MS practices that are very anticompetitive and anti-consumer. The DRM scheme was a playbook. See the windows phone home policy. The Sony rootkit scandal was awful, but that type of behavior has not been seen in the PlayStation division at all. I think that's why Xbox gets lumped into the evil Microsoft argument, while PlayStation has been unscathed by most of Sony's blunders.

I was wondering if that was the one people were thinking of, but yes, the various businesses at Sony have traditionally been highly compartmentalized — though to his credit, Kaz has been working to correct this — so I don't think the actions of one division necessarily reflect on the "character" of another division, especially in years past. Conversely, every division at MS seems to share the primary goal of WINDOWS EVERYWHERE, as evidenced by the DDR3/eSRAM and their upcoming W10 extravaganza. Putting Windows in your living room was always the reason XBox was ever a thing in the first place.

Anyway, root kits. That's actually why I mentioned motivation as an important consideration. First, I think the term "root kit" is unnecessarily inflammatory, because of the implied malfeasance. While there's no question that BMG were granted very low level access to the system, it was for the express purpose of protecting their content. I don't believe they had any intention of stealing your credit card info or conscripting your box in to their bot-net. Therefore, I would describe it as an incredibly overzealous response to a legitimate threat, having little or nothing to do with SCE. Honestly, it's difficult for me to personally generate much outrage over the controversy, because as a Microsoft-avoider, I was immune to the intrusion. Plus, I'd already given up buying discs thanks to iTMS.

Another big one is OtherOS. Yeah, removing it sucked, but it was clearly done in direct response to a legitimate threat. Was it the only solution? I don't know enough about the technical details to say either way, but I have a hard time classifying it as a dick move on Sony's part. It may have been a panicked move, or it may have been well considered. I can't say either way. IMO, it was generous to offer the functionality in the first place, since they didn't really gain anything from it, and clearly put their ecosystem at risk by doing so.

 

[WordsintheWater]

The one thing I don't understand is how do people and Microsoft not see that the parity clause pushes developers to use Sony's Pub Fund more than if they were allowed to release on both platforms?

 

[LiquidSolid]

I don't know. I've just had a look over his previous comments and I don't see anything banworthy in there.

I'm honestly not surprised. He made no real attempt to discuss anything, he was just here to derail the thread with Sony Too arguments that never really made much sense. And when someone else made a good counter point to his argument, he'd just ignore it or move the goal posts, because in his world, videogames grow on trees or something. The whole thing was incredibly obnoxious.

 

[TrebuchetGames]

Fair enough. What's Greenshoots? Are you able to tell us anything about it?

If you are from the UK and have a Small to Medium Business (must be a Ltd company for example not sole trader) you can apply for a Game Fund. The Greenshoots fund is from GamesLab and Microsoft. They do probably about one/two a year where you can apply for upto £25k. It does involve match funding (where you have to put in the same as you would get).

The grants are hotly contested and I do think that already established indie companies have a bit more of a leg up, but it's still nice that these things exist.

For more information, visit:

http://gameslab.creativeengland.co.uk/gameslab/

 

[serversurfer]

Cool. Thanks again. <3