I was talking with a lapsed gamer friend about old RPG game series we used to enjoy and he mentioned how he was surprised that none of them had sequels yet on the newest console generation. It got me thinking, is this generation just too costly too develop for if you aren't making a triple A game? The Persona series hasn't been shy about saying that they keep putting out sequels on PS2 rather then PS3 because of the cost of development.
It certainly seems as though that's the big reason that many developers are moving to handhelds. A awhile back, SquareEnix made a huge announcement that the next sequel to their Dragon Quest series would be exclusively for Nintendo DS. Dragon Quest has always been a huge series, on par with Final Fantasy, in Japan, but here in America its never done amazing numbers. The Castlevania series had many experiments into a console version during previous generations but none were as successful as the handheld ones, so that's what they've been sticking to entirely in this generation.
More and more we are seeing once popular series that can no longer equal out their development costs with their sales numbers moving to handhelds to save development costs. So will this be the trend throughout the current consoles lifespans? The original Playstation as well as the Playstation 2's lineups were filled with second and third tier game series. Its looking more and more like that won't be case for the Playstation 3.
Maybe the Xbox 360 is cheaper enough to develop for that some of these series will move there, or maybe they will dive into the ocean of Wii titles and try to stay afloat, but I have a feeling the majority will move to the PSP or DS. This isn't a problem for me at all. I find myself playing more handheld games nowadays then console anyway. Its just easier to play something that doesn't require hogging the main tv or leaving the room when you've got a 1 year old running around. So bring on the games, handhelds are definitely my saviors of gaming.
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1 comments:
Totally. I find that the hand helds are a great platform for RPGs. I have never been a huge fan of RPGs but I feel that highly advanced graphics is not necessarily needed to make a good RPG, like it would in a shooter.
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