Split-Screen :: The Game-Geek’s Daily Read

Fenix has slashed its way to the top of the 360 charts yet again, with 3 million units sold, and no matter how critical one is of the gruesome bloodbath, the Delta juggernaut rolls on aided by Microsoft’s marketing fury and intensity. Gears of War 2, however, puts up a critical setup to the next game in the franchise. Although touted to appear within the 360’s life span, it’s not a little extreme to speculate whether the next game in the franchise will actually be tied exclusively to a singular platform.

The reasons of doubt actually emerge with the given economic slowdown and global recession that has sabotaged the amoeba’s ultimate plan for global dominance. The industry, which stood hard selling Xbox’s during the previous economic slowdown, now seems to have been badly affected with numerous shelved projects; (Saw: The Videogame, Activision cutting down on franchises, Midway on the brink of following 3DO’s footsteps) and employee layoffs(Sony, Microsoft, Electronic Arts have rallied off a number of employees from their respective organizations). This slowdown is expected to worsen before the requisite measures are undertaken to keep the global economy held firmly.

With rising development costs it’s almost become imperative for every developer to realize its net worth by selling a minimum of a million units of its hard labor. With significant changes taking place within the Unreal engine Universe, costs are splurging in relation to development costs of next generation technology and the current crop of Unreal licensed products will eventually see a significant fall, with fewer and fewer companies taking risks to churn out average-ware for the current generation machines.

In addition to this there lies the obvious bout of competition like the i.d. tech 5 engine, which aims at creating cheaper development costs with consistencies spanning across all development platforms.

There also seems to be a bigger urge for developers to invest in their custom engine, which can be used as a platform for their other cream lineups, with a lower price point, Activision’s Call of Duty series is perhaps the perfect example, followed by Rockstar’s crime buster, Grand Theft Auto IV, based on the R.A.G.E engine; which was also used for their latest Midnight Club Entrant series. Even Electronic Arts are heavily investing in their custom engines for the development of their game, which include the Frostbite engine and custom Dead Space engine; which is perhaps being used for the next Godfather game.

It’s often been quoted, that Metal Gear Solid 4 was perhaps the last big exclusive this generation would see and this could be true since the nature of costs has spiraled upwards, with a majority of pro Sony publishers (Square-Enix, Capcom, Namco) going multi-platform to achieve maximum number of sales.

The problem Epic needs to confront is that of finding a new market to sell its franchise. It has already started doing this in the form of the multi-platform psychological thriller that is currently in development and the much touted partnership with E.A and Grasshopper Studios.

The only way of doing this and getting a humongous response, is by tapping the PlayStation 3 crowd, which has not seen any part of this gruesome game. However, since the franchise has been invested in heavily by Microsoft, it would only be fair for the developer to allow the third iteration of the game to be a timed exclusive.

Grand Theft Auto’s legacy cannot be elaborated upon more explicitly, than by highlighting this fact: All the 3 GTA’s, which appeared in the previous generation, have sold 26 million units on the PlayStation 2 alone and all of them were released later on the Xbox platform and still went on to sell a million plus units. The fourth iteration, however, has sold about 10+ million copies on both platforms combined, giving a clear indication of the changing nature of exclusives.

Given the stiff competition the industry is facing, exclusives are priorities for first part developers, and Sony recognizes this by canalizing its funds into AAA first party titles and creating franchises. Gears of War has already an established franchise to work around with and making it appear on Sony’s platform will give it an immense boost. Who knows, instead of witnessing, perhaps, 3 million+ units, we could witness close to 6 million or even more.

Unreal tournament III, which was launched on the PlayStation 3, saw an incessant number of “modifications” being made available online within hours of its launch. With a game as intense as Gears of War and Sony’s free online services, the possibilities of the game seem endless.

The franchise is both lucrative and of great essence to Microsoft and they are probably going to undertake every possible move in ensuring that this coveted franchise does not end up as a multiplatform experience. But given the stiff “resistance” who knows, tables could turn and even a critically acclaimed Sony exclusive developer might find its legs seeking the warmth of the 360 platform, so to speak.