Final Fantasy 16 Producer Reckons One Gaming Platform Would Be Better for Everyone

It would be. But it would have to be Cloud or PC. Plus you got mobile and it destroys consoles in gaming dollars. So not sure how it would work out. It would cut down some dev time for sure tho.

... Noooooo. The evidence is in the PS3 and Xbox One eras. When gaming industries get a ton of money, the higher ups get cocky and put in less effort. If they consolidate, the money pools at the top. If we're going to live in a capitalist (let's be honest) world, then there needs to be healthy competition otherwise we get what's happening with Disney and Pokemon right now.

Call me crazy, but in an age of massive corporate consolidation, I still cherish the fact that we have multiple platforms competing and making each-other better as a result.

Well he thinks this because it would mean less work for him and his team to bring things to multiple platforms, but he's wrong because competition is key for driving innovation and quality.

In a perfect world sure. The big three would never go for it though. They all see everything totally different.

In a world with no competition we'd have a console at twice the price and game prices into three figures. Keep it as it is.

I mean, I don't necessarily disagree. The problem is consoles are closed platforms and ecosystems with their own proprietary OS'. If they were open and came with standard OS' like Windows or Linux, yet still had their own proprietary storefronts, achievements, friendslists, etc. it would make things a lot easier. And I do think this can be done without mass consolidation but in order to do it, they'd have to get rid of the idea of closed ecosystems which is what the Epic vs Apple lawsuit was all about. And I imagine platform holders would fight this very notion tooth and nail every step along the way the way Apple and Google are.

Good for devs? Yeah, agreed, less SKUs to develop for.
Better for players? No way in hell.

Also, here's a simple solution: the industry should embrace more open source alternatives and make them the standard in any software or hardware available in the market.

Disagree, competition between Sony, MS and Nintendo is all the better for us players as they have to compete for are money and attention. If Sony was the only player then i doubt games like Spider-Man 2 would be happening and we would be at their mercy. Same goes for MS where you wonder if Gamepass would ever exist if Xbox was the only console going.

The more this guy speaks the more i think SE should just send him back to his MMO and away from everything else especially after his lackluster FF16.

Hell nah, competition is good for consumers

But then I can’t look down on my family members who have xbones.

Arh yes, a MSX Series 360.
Unfortunately no split screen for anyone.

If we lived in the world those in power want you to believe that you do, then those of us in "democratic" free market societies would not benefit from a lack of competition. Reminding you with propaganda like "competition benefits those they label the consumer (the mark they wish to bleed dry)."
However, that is a lie and not how the market works. So really, if there was one platform, or many it would make little difference in terms of affordability as corporate cabalism and price fixing are the name of the game. It would get rid of this nonsensical exclusivity war, but aside from that pricing is not determined by Demand nor competition. So really, he's not wrong. It would help with development, as well as the title being available to the full gamer install base, despite the fact that corporate greed would find a way to price gouge you even more under this scenario.

Different consoles and different companies behind them is preferable to avoid a monopoly, which ends up hurting everyone other than a handful of executives and shareholders.

The death of exclusives is what would really benefit both players and devs.

1 platform would be great if said heavily regulated by consumers protection agency. The fact that neither Nintendo or Sony offer a proper refund policy is exactly why I game on PC.

Most people presumably would not care, but if there was only a single platform there would for example not be advanced haptics in the controller, no VR, no dockable handheld.

And presumably games would still be played in VGA resolution with 16 colors and on a device with 640 kB of RAM.

I did not have a particularly positive opinion of this guy before, but now he's calling for monopolies as a good thing. I really don't like this guy. At all.

And before people cheer the idea of MS throwing in the towel, just remember that MS buying Sony and Nintendo would fulfill his dream. We already had that dream in the US in the 80's with Nintendo as a full monopoly. It was not pleasant. For devs nor consumers.

Now if he's promoting a single open platform like Windows where Sony and MS and Nintendo just make games for it in various marketplaces, then maybe we could all live in harmony. I somehow doubt that's what he's suggesting.

@KundaliniRising333 I Agree with your premise but disagree overall. Competition is the reason a PS5 launched at $500 and not quite a bit more. Corporate cabalism is very real, but the companies still have to watch over their shoulders at what the other guy is doing, the competition is still beneficial, just not as beneficial as it ought to be.

Well if Sony were to acquire Square-Enix, then his wish could come true, as far as creating games for only one platform, that is.

@Geep You’re forgetting about PC and Mac, IOS and Android, etc. anything that’s requires an actual computer has long dealt with this, and continued to do so as a total monopoly hasn’t formed.

A monopoly is NEVER good for consumers. Companies can drive their prices up because there’s no fear of competition. It may be EASIER, but BETTER? Hell no. One of the stupidest statements I’ve heard in awhile.

@4kgk2 I disagree I wish Microsoft was even more competitive then it is now, when the 360 was on Sony's neck that's when Sony pulled no punches by the end of the PS3 & the PS4 era.

I hope Microsoft turns it around and puts pressure on Sony so that we get a repeat of the 7 gen where both companies where basically on their hands and knees trying to please us

I think folks should maybe take it easy and not get too worked up about these comments. He is saying this from the perspective of a creator. A creator wants as many folks as possible to experience whatever they create. It makes perfect sense for him to have that wish.

I'm also pretty sure however that he understands there are many reasons on the business side of things why this would never happen. Take a breath people.

@NEStalgia Yah i hear you on the hardware price front. I watched this eye opening documentary a few years back that spurred me to investigate it more. It turns out most of these so called competitors get together and agree on price ranges as well as product longevity (planned obsolescence), in order to ensure that for the most part they all get to swindle their marks equally.

Take for example the onset of the led light bulb, look into it and you come to find that when it was coming to market along with the bulb tech before it (incandescent/fluorescent), the major producers got together and hashed out the fact that they last too long and thus they had to ensure they had lesser lifespans that the tach is capable of so they can get you to buy more and at a premium. Thus, these manufacturers agreed on a lifespan and price across companies, yet conveniently kept the lifespan marketing on the bulbs greatly overinflated.

This form of price and quality foxing occurs in nearly every industry that "competition" occurs. ITs all just deception and predation. The monopolies already exist in the economic system as well as political. They must merely maintain the illusion of choice and competition to keep the masses asleep.

All of that heavy stuff aside, I really don't like this guy for a myriad of reasons, however here i think he's speaking int terms of ease of development, and full consumer access. Both things we the gamers suffer for their being exclusivity and unfinished/technically unbroken releases.

@HonestHick pc also has it problems with 1000’s of different configurations.

No ta. Strong competition is what makes for good innovation.

Being provocative: Do you mean Unreal Engine?

Computing is going towards defining everything in code. Game platforms are on that trajectory as well. The game platforms devs are picking are UE or Unity etc. The differences between Sony and Microsoft and PC have never been smaller.

This is especially true for game developers that aren’t (1) pushing boundaries in terms of hardware power both small (not trying to run on a Raspberry Pi or Playdate) and large (not trying to get FF16 on Switch or pushing AAA path traced everything graphics) and aren’t interested in (2) special user interactions (the “standard” controller is fine no DDR pads or Guitar Hero gear or the Playdate crank).

@BrintaPap that is very true. It’s one of the reason i will more than likely not get back into PC gaming as it can be a headache but when it’s working right i do believe it to be the best place to play. I own a PS5, Series X and Switch and love turning them on and they just work. But i would be fine if in the future i had one place to play. But like anything there is Pro’s and Con’s to everything.

And that's why exclusives matter. Better competition for our attention and cash also brand identity.

But noooo...ppl here complain about timed exclusives and such.

@4kgk2 Xbox lives in your head rent free. I think you might miss them more than you’d think. But without them you wouldn’t have Trophy’s, PSN, PSN+. Competition is important even tho you dislike them.

No, it wouldn't be better for everyone. If that was the case there wouldn't be such a thing as competition and that's not good for consumers.

Masahiro Sakurai would have a field day with the next Smash Bros game.

Honestly, everything in one place, no game locked behind a licence war, top hardware for those Nintendo games. I'm all for that.

Would the quality dip because no one is in direct competition? I think for a few publishers this would be the case, but we've been getting half baked games for years and I don't feel Sony and Nintendo are in direct competition, only the fanboys like to make it a competition. I think we'd still quality stuff from them.

Subscription based services will be priced unfairly.

Zero competition would be better for consumers. Said no consumer ever.

PC is not "One platform" as developers need to account for a decade worth of hardware with all kids of specs.

With 4 separate companies developing MOBO/GPU drivers... and Microsoft developing the OS.

It can be PS or Xbox, fine with me. As long as not Nintendo. You just had to see the handheld market before Valve and Asus pulled it out of archaic land.

@HonestHick Xbox is bad and won’t be miss by me at all. Microsoft started paying for online and this subscription service crap they are one of the worst company in gaming next to EA.

@NEStalgia he’s not promoting or calling for anything you have made a bit of a stretch there.

He said that 1 platform would be easier all round. That’s hardly a lie or calling for monopolies.

I would be devestating for the customer. If there is only one place to there would not be any reason to try anymore. If there is no option where are you to go when the only store is terrible.

Anybody remember the dark ages of Internet Explorer 6?

Well that's exactly what would happen if there was only one gaming platform; massive hardware stagnation with no motivation for innovation. Of course devs would love this because then they could maximise sales by targeting the lowest common denominator and put the least amount of effort into development. It makes no business sense for them to push for high spec requirements because they'll never make their money back if only tiny segment of the market has the means to play the game at all, and we'll all suffer from shoddy looking games.

That's why consoles specifically are crucial for video game advancement. Without a base console to target we would just be getting mobile phone tier games from most devs.

And you can't conflate music and movies to video games because unlike music and movies, games require a minimum base spec of hardware and software to run, hardware that's continually evolving, which isn't the case for movies and music.

@KaijuKaiser There's his views on the name JRPG and outside of his MMO its clear going by FF16 he doesn't even know what FF is or even cares for it.

Been saying this for decades, just stop making consoles (a.k.a. DRM boxes) and put everything on PC. Now with the Steam Deck providing a standard platform for people who want it consoles are only holding things back.

@4kgk2 Fun fact Sony started the sub to play games stuff with Plus and of course Now that predates Gamepass. Yes MS started the whole pay to play online stuff and that cost is why the 360 had a much better online side then the PS3 what felt like it was held together by duct tape and super glue.

@chucksneed That would be excellent way to kill gaming by removing consoles and forcing everyone on to PC.

@4kgk2 i know you don’t like them. They are in every comment you make. They did start those very successful services that Sony seemed to like an awful bit. But it was that money that got players a better service than the PS3’s free offering missing features. All 3 consoles are really good and not going anywhere. I agreed that it would be nice to have all my games in one place. Even nicer to play PS games without their good awful controller designs. But that wouldn’t be good for competition.

@DennisReynolds ok lmao

Sure it'd be nice if there was one platform for everything, but only if it was regulated to not be anti-consumer.

Disagree on this one. It would be in a ideal world, but in reality the company with the monopoly will start raising prices as there is no competition to keep it in check. It would also hold imense power over publishers and developers knowing they could strong arm them into bad deals cause they have no other platform to publish on.
I understand that he means it in the ideal scenario. Sadly, i don't find it realistic.

To go on a Tawainese channel and talk about "One Platform" is kind of ironic, given the political climate in Taiwan and a certain country that uses the same rhetoric.

That honestly sounds terrible. Then there’d be even less innovation.

In the past, I also thought it would be better if there was only one platform. But now I realise that if that was the case, everything would be more overpriced than it is now.

kojima has been saying this for decades. not a new idea but i agree that it would be interesting to see... the most likely outcome is xbox leaves the industry (or goes all in on cloud streaming) and we are left with sony and nintendo hardware, as well as the mess that is the pc (due to the thousands of configuarations that devs need to compensate for).

What a joke! The mainline Pokemon games are locked to a single platform (the Nintendo Switch), and look at the garbage they have become! Having a monopoly makes devs greedier and feel like they can get away with releasing very low quality games...

@chucksneed Do you really think the 100M+ sales for PS and Switch are hardcore PC gamers that are ready to jump ship? Check out Steam Deck sales compared to console sales and see how big the difference is. Fact is console gamers are console gamers because its cheaper and more simple, remove consoles and people will just move to their phones and gaming is hit hard because the sales the likes of Hogwarts and Zelda got this year are no longer possible.

@DennisReynolds What I'm saying is that ideally there'd be one platform to develop for (PC) with a handful of static devices (like the Steam Deck) to for developers to target. A single open platform covering every use case for every user. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is because Sony and Nintendo (and MS to a lesser degree) have their brainwashed legions of fans who don't want things to be better.

@chucksneed It wouldn't be ideal because Devs wouldn't be able to make the games they want because the audience wouldn't be there, FF16 wouldn't have those production values if it wasn't on console and games like Hogwarts would either be heavily scaled back or no longer exist. Got to remember gaming took off and become what it is today because of consoles, even now PC gaming still has a negative stereotype surrounding it while consoles have become so common place that even people who don't play games have one lying around. Hell consoles saved gaming from disappearing all together.

@KillerBoy one could argue that currently Xbox and ps are removing competition, pushing digital means you can only purchase from their own store. A single platform spec with multiple stores however introduces competition (potentially)

@DennisReynolds I think you would still have situations where Sony would pay for something to be sold exclusively in their store front

@DennisReynolds You sure have trouble with hypotheticals, huh?

@chucksneed You sure have trouble understanding hypothetically or not why gaming being PC only would be awful, not at all viable and would greatly impact how games are made due to having such a smaller market compared to the market consoles bring.

We get it, the guy doesn’t like diversity 😜