One of the greatest advantages that the PlayStation 2 had over the Xbox and even Gamecube was that it was the primary SKU for developers. The same trend follows with the Xbox 360 in the current generation. Being the first to the market in 2005, the Xbox 360 has become the core console to develop on, followed by the PlayStation 3. Because the Xbox 360 is the lead SKU for many developers, sometimes the PlayStation 3 becomes the backseat driver to many projects, thus, getting a later release date. However, recent revelations show that perhaps the PS3 could possibly become the lead platform for developers down the road.
When had the opportunity to sit down with Gamasutra, studio head of Midway Chicago, Mike Bilder said some pretty interesting comments in favor of the PS3. When asked about what they [Midway] would have done differently from the start in terms of development, Mike Bilder had this to say:
“I think a lot of people and a lot of focus as far as games that we have internally that are going to be multi-SKU are trying to put the PS3 out in front now, make that your lead SKU. And in the same way I think a lot of people put the PS2 as their lead SKU in the last hardware generation, and then Xbox came after.”, said Mike Bilder. He later went on to comment, “The difficulty you run into there, at least in the last generation, was that the Xbox was considerably more powerful than the PS2, and you found that people didn’t always take advantage of the hardware. Whereas with the PS3 and the 360, it’s certainly more of a level playing field, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a negative to put the PS3 first. But it does help mitigate some of that risk in framerate, memory, technology, just the hardware differences.”
As you may see, Midway is looking to have the PlayStation 3 as their lead SKU for future projects. If this is a trend that shifts across the entire industry, then possibly the PS3 could see better quality games that take usage of the PS3’s Cell and Blu-ray technology, thus creating the ideal PS3 experience.
Source: GameSutra.com