History shows that no matter how good the hardware was, without the right software support, any platform was doomed, plain and simple. It's a big factor in the failure of everything at the time that wasn't from Sony, Nintendo or Sega...
I would add to that--the smart companies (Microsoft, Apple) work very, very hard to make life as easy as possible for developers. One thing that came up again and again at GDC was that programmers will highly favor a platform that is easy and efficient to program for, whereas one that is conceivably more powerful may well get ports, but probably not by the core dev team. It's no surprise that the Xbox and 360 were so attractive to PC game developers because it was a fairly straightforward matter to adapt (and later focus) on those platforms from the PC side. Indeed, some of the devs talked about how programming for the 360 was very similar to programming for a PC game, except that you could do more tricks because you could know for sure that it would work on all 360s (whereas the diversity of the PC side makes this more problematic).
I think one reason you're seeing an explosion in iPhone stuff right now is that it is relatively easy to develop for, whereas the PSP and DS represent some pretty steep barriers to entry. I also heard a few say that the PS3 was a very difficult machine to code for, whereas the 360 was a breeze. The same was true for the Apple II vs. the Commodore 64; many talented programmers kept developing on the Apple II because they liked the dev tools better than the ones on the C-64 or 128. Does anyone remember that god-awful basic that shipped with the Amiga?
Another consideration is how much of the platform's wizardry is built-in to the hardware; or, to put it another way, how much room is left on the software side for innovation? The Atari 2600 lasted forever because the software folks were able to do so much; the hardware was simple, but the software had lots of room to expand the platform's capabilities. The more advanced consoles had sprites and such, but the developers felt they had less flexibility (all the games tended to look the same, etc.) The Apple II came up again here in this context; apparently, there was far more tricks coders at their disposal with the Apple II than with the C-64, which did more work for them but, conversely, tied their hands by making the hardware take over more stuff.
History shows that no matter how good the hardware was, without the right software support, any platform was doomed, plain and simple. It's a big factor in the failure of everything at the time that wasn't from Sony, Nintendo or Sega...
I would add to that--the smart companies (Microsoft, Apple) work very, very hard to make life as easy as possible for developers. One thing that came up again and again at GDC was that programmers will highly favor a platform that is easy and efficient to program for, whereas one that is conceivably more powerful may well get ports, but probably not by the core dev team. It's no surprise that the Xbox and 360 were so attractive to PC game developers because it was a fairly straightforward matter to adapt (and later focus) on those platforms from the PC side. Indeed, some of the devs talked about how programming for the 360 was very similar to programming for a PC game, except that you could do more tricks because you could know for sure that it would work on all 360s (whereas the diversity of the PC side makes this more problematic).
I think one reason you're seeing an explosion in iPhone stuff right now is that it is relatively easy to develop for, whereas the PSP and DS represent some pretty steep barriers to entry. I also heard a few say that the PS3 was a very difficult machine to code for, whereas the 360 was a breeze. The same was true for the Apple II vs. the Commodore 64; many talented programmers kept developing on the Apple II because they liked the dev tools better than the ones on the C-64 or 128. Does anyone remember that god-awful basic that shipped with the Amiga?
Another consideration is how much of the platform's wizardry is built-in to the hardware; or, to put it another way, how much room is left on the software side for innovation? The Atari 2600 lasted forever because the software folks were able to do so much; the hardware was simple, but the software had lots of room to expand the platform's capabilities. The more advanced consoles had sprites and such, but the developers felt they had less flexibility (all the games tended to look the same, etc.) The Apple II came up again here in this context; apparently, there was far more tricks coders at their disposal with the Apple II than with the C-64, which did more work for them but, conversely, tied their hands by making the hardware take over more stuff.
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com