So you want to develop for the xbox and playstation?

[Cosmos]

I notice that there are many people who would like to see Elite Dangerous ported to consoles, such as PS4, Xbox One and whilst I have no issue with that in principle, I came across this talk by Gabe Newell who cast light on the problems of developing for the big console platforms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR8CVLVmKQs

Its sadly revealing to learn that Sony and Microsoft have engineered their platforms to make it hard as possible to port code to or from it.

It will be interesting to see where Steam OS and Steam Machines goes. When it comes to value for money present consoles seem like a very poor deal.

More info about steam machines here.
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

 

[SuperG]

Its a old longhorn wow bable about wenn current old gen where new.
Current state is that MS isn't just PC main target market but a direct new competor as wimdows store and just as other big publisher do there own steam thing. EA Origin. Vlaves core bussness is crimping more player on that market.

Current state is that as reaction on competition it is pushing linux.
As competing with consoles it getting bigpicture mode to TV and a steam controler wich can handle pure optimised older keyb/ mouse games formbigpicture console like gaming with PC and the full steam libary on your TV.

This old anti console brable is still valid but loking forward, especialy the new PS4 tacle this problem. So with nextgen this isue is solved.

Also with there steam where the take huge margin and I see that as there core bussness. The can stick with PC as exclusive developers.
There pure dev studio cometition.
Idsoft Epic Crytech all ambrase consoles and some even avoid PC specific feature set. Like DX10 and up for a long time .

In practise dealing with cell isues is matter of having team member who canntacle this extra port work and plan it in and take budged for it into acount. Wich is for years how many crossplatform titels are made.

Its more Valve running behind there competition who do crossplatform for decades.