Newell brands online restrictions a 'dead end' policy; Pearce says a single game network would be ideal
Two of the world’s most influential PC games studios want Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft to break down the barricades to their consoles’ online services.
Gabe Newell and Frank Pearce, the co-founders of Valve Software and Blizzard Entertainment, both believe that online unification between consoles would be a progressive step for the industry.
Pearce told Develop that it would be “ideal to have a unified online community regardless of the platform that gamers are playing on”.
Newell told Develop that he’d prefer to see the industry “figure out how to make the internet better instead of figuring out how to keep customers off the internet”.
“One way is a dead end, the other creates more value,” he added.
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Freedom offered by online platforms such as Facebook and iOS is widely regarded as key to their success.
Developers can rapidly adapt new revenue models, such as free-to-play and cross-game promotions, and have access to near-instant analytical data.
And the seemingly unstoppable growth of mobile and social gaming suggests that tightly guarded online platforms, such as with the Wii and Xbox 360, have lost their appeal with developers.
Demands for online console ubiquity are common within the games indsutry. UK studio Jagex wanted to host its MMO Runescape across Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 – a bid which was denied by some, or all, of the three platform holders.
But the extra pressure applied by Valve and Blizzard, both of which make several billion dollars in revenue each year, may be a foretoken to a wider shift in industry policy.
Sony has already begun to open its network by incorporating Valve’s Steam service on PS3. The company has allowed Icelandic studio CCP Games to unify PlayStation and PC via the upcoming online title Dust 514 – a game which communicates significant data between both platforms.
Newell said it is important that Sony finds financial reward for breaking old habits and opening the network for Valve and CCP.
But if Sony does find success, that could spur other platform holders on.
For Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U online service, the company said it is “creating a much more flexible system that will allow the best approaches by independent publishers”.
But whether any will allow rival consoles to share an online space remains to be seen. Newell said such as process is “certainly technically feasible. That’s a solved problem.”
Pearce said it was “hard to say” if total online agnosticism would become reality, but he remained hopeful that the industry would see more partnerships like Sony’s with Valve and CCP.
“One of the things I look at when it comes to the modern games business, is that gamers today want to play whatever game experience they want, whenever they want with whomever they want,” Pearce said.
“So I think you’re going to see a lot of games experiences that get platform agnostic. Blizzard has to contemplate that.”
He added that, from a design perspective, there are legitimate hurdles to overcome.
“If you have a gaming experience on the PC that you want people to enjoy on the console you may have to adapt components of that experience to different platforms,” he said.
“So maybe that isn’t a level playing-field. Maybe some games are best as a shared community rather than a shared gameplay experience. It really is completely dependent on the game itself.”
Blizzard has “a lot of guys in the office who are passionate about the console space; people who have a lot of great ideas for interactive ideas in the console space. It’s definitely something we’ll revisit," Pearce said.
Sony has always allowed open-ended network support on it's platform. Just look back to the PS2 with FFXI. It even allowed mod support for Unreal Tournament 3. Sony execs have even been quoted talking about this topic.
Personally, I think it would be great for the other two big ones to just chill out and allow universal access to all. But I don't see it happening, since Microsoft wants to keep it's network sanctioned off from the rest of humanity, since they force a pay to play network that they don't want other people getting into. They want to do everything on their own--which is great--they want to make their next console like Steam, where you can buy all the games released digitally or like OnLive where you don't even have the game to begin with. But Microsoft tends to fail in delivering a better service, since they enjoy hiked prices versus value purchases--so they won't compete yet. Nintendo is just kind of the brain-dead kid in the corner, who doesn't really care because it knows nobody else will until the Wii U, which will become outdated in a year from it's release when a PS4 or Xbox 3 comes out, unless it meets the same success as the Wii. I personally think Nintendo will open its network, but Microsoft won't do it until people are sick of it's ignorance.
All in all, do we all want open network? Yes. But it's thanks to Microsoft that we probably won't have one for several years until they get off this "turf war" mentality. There won't only be "one" single console, not with the way history has concerned itself. I don't even have to be a fanboy to tell you any of this. You can blatantly call me a PS3, PC or Nintendo fanboy, but that solves nothing. Microsoft is preventing the open-ended services from conjoining, we all know it, so we can stop trying to point the blame on everyone when we all know that it's the ignorance of one single entity that is responsible for all this mess.
*points finger at MS*
Those guys know that as soon as people can play COD online with people from PS consoles for free, they will realize they are paying for essentially nothing.
MS is in the business of monopolizing, and they do it with dirty and aggressive business tactics. They will never play nice with Nin or Sony, because that would help the competitor, so, even though it would be an unarguably progressive step for the industry, MS will never go for it. They can't stomp out competition with that business strategy, after all.
All in all, F MS.
MS gamer like our service private and lag free, no thanks, we dont play with trash, if they want a better network then get sony and nintendo to make one, but they cant! You get what you pay for! MS doesnt need to share squat, they're is no advantage to us gamers or Microsoft! No pity! Having the network open Makes the most powerful, PC downgrade to Nintendo (lowest hardware tech) to share the same experience. No thanks! Conversation is over! On behalf of Microsoft, we will remain private. Go start your community without us!
MS gamers like our service private and lag free, no thanks, we dont play with trash, if they want a better network then get sony and nintendo to make one, but they cant! You get what you pay for! MS doesnt need to share squat, they're is no advantage to us gamers or Microsoft! No pity! Having the network open makes the most powerful, PC downgrade to Nintendo (lowest hardware tech) to share the same experience. No thanks! Conversation is over! On behalf of Microsoft, we will remain private. Go start your community without us!
im happy to pay for xbox live. i dont see why people always bring the fee up. its not much for the service they provide. like someone else here said, you get what you pay for. ps3 fanboys are just cheapskates that have never known the wonders of xbox live. sure, free is good but dont knock something until youve treyd it
Gabe Newell is the best
@mrpinkeye ya sorry but no. I have ps3/360 and i pay for live however i see no difference between the two. I enjoy the same quality online for both systems except one isnt forcing me to pay a fee for online. Dont generalize that ps3 owners are cheapskates, it makes you sound like a moron.
Never. It's obvious blizz and valve are talking about free to play fps's since ncsoft is working on moorpgs with blade & soul on pc and ps3. For the first time in history console are getting 2 free to play fps's next year: dust 514 and tribe ascend. And valve has tf2. And red5, a team of ex wow devs, is working on a free to play fps: Firefall. I'll never support such thing, i don't want to play consolized stuff, this way i'll never play a decent tps like gunz again.
It's only a matter of consolization:
-first person perspective/feel (like gears, a fps/tps hybrid)
-iron sight meant to slow down players and make targets HUGE
-covers cause pads sucks at aiming to players must stop (RE and gears don't look so different now, right?)
-level design xbox style, the worst possible one
-low mouse sensibility
i'll never support this shet.
Never. It's obvious blizz and valve are talking about free to play fps's since ncsoft is working on moorpgs with blade & soul on pc and ps3. For the first time in history consoles are getting 2 free to play fps's next year: dust 514 and tribe ascend. And valve has tf2. And red5, a team of ex wow devs, is working on a free to play fps: Firefall. I'll never support such thing, i don't want to play consolized stuff, this way i'll never play a decent tps like gunz again.
It's only a matter of consolization:
-first person perspective/feel (like gears, a fps/tps hybrid)
-iron sight meant to slow down players and make targets HUGE
-covers cause pads sucks at aiming to players must stop (RE and gears don't look so different now, right?)
-level design xbox style, the worst possible one
-low mouse sensibility
i'll never support this.
Ps3 will never have what xbl has, xbox live party chat, voice messaging. Avatars, better survers, better privacy. come on really. Play station network offers nothing but free online! Xbl offers all those things for $60 a year, u can come up with money for a game but you can't come up with money for xbl, sorry to say ut your cheap!! ***don't reply calling me a morron or anyone, you're making your self look real ignorant***
This is going to happen, it's just a question of when, not if. To those who would scoff, please respond from your AOL accounts, the proof that walled gardens will eventually be overcome with weeds. That's my two cents.
It's nice having one community, however it can then cause the games to become platforms in themselves above the consoles - which I believe will further the saturation that seems evident in the industry.
Without differentiation between the platform holder's packages there is little reason for the platforms to be in any way different. Currently the key differences are the input devices and exclusive franchises as well as their five-P's. A unified on-line experience is just one step closer to an open console architecture and possible fragmentation in the next decade.
But maybe now *is* the time for a single console specification and for the big 3 to just sit on a council to define the hardware, but I highly doubt Nintendo would agree with that (given they rely on the hardware platform to deliver their 'exclusive' software). I think Sony and Microsoft might benefit the most from it though.
I've been preaching this some time now.
PSN is not as good as Live, however, instead of voice-chat messaging, you can just text, instead of a party chat, you have a party room with text, every game can't run music in the background, but many do...what's the point? Xbox live is just a smoother experience than PSN, but it's not leap and bounds better or offering something completely new. That's why you have such backlash about the price, because many, after playing online on PSN, don't see a big enough difference to justify Xbox costing them money every year. Xbox Live is smoother, in many games it does have less lag, it's just the gap is closing and Sony's online doesn't completely suck balls anymore so MS needs to add more new things besides avatars to justify the price tag. Personally, I'm more of a SP local multiplayer gamer, so it's easy to see how I'm not impressed by live's features, nothing to do with being cheap, PSN is just good enough for me, and many others would agree.
Also a note, Vita supports party chat, and has enough ram to run a bunch of apps at once meaning the entire OS should be able to run on top of your game, (cross game chat/in-game music/party chat etc) meaning most of Xbox Live features will be on Vita day one. It's all about value, whatever you feel comfortable paying, that's what you should do. Everyone has different preferences. PSN guys should look at Live guys like there a morons getting ripped off, and Live guys shouldn't look at PSN dudes like they don't know what awesome features are like...lol it's all just preference.
Microsoft has conned thousands of people into believing they are receiving some highly exclusive, premium service by paying for access to something everyone else gets for free. As a PC gamer, I pay an ISP for access to the internet. That is it. Period.
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I play numerous games - free and otherwise - with no lag. I chat, both voice and text. I download DLC, and even high-quality free game mods, without paying for the "right" to do so. All of this and more I do without paying for access to an exclusive network that adds absolutely no value to the product.
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Wake up, 360 gamers. You are being screwed at every turn. Low-end hardware specs that limit the entire gaming industry. A closed network that means no access to many of the games other platforms enjoy. What PC gamers get for free you pay for or do not get at all.
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There is no value in Microsoft's XBOX live. they are charging you money for something PS3 an PC gamers get for free. The right to play online. Please don't insult our collective intelligence by trying to justify Microsoft's closed network as premium or higher quality. We already know better from practical experience.
