NCAA Football 11 Rosters

Things have changed little since the PS2 era. Square supports the winners. The PS2 completely dominated the last generation – it was in the 100 million plus margin before the Xbox even hit 20 million.

The playing field is far more even nowadays, with Sony and Microsoft sharing a much more even portion of the software market. Unless you’re owned by the console producer or can secure a major exclusive deal, it’s madness to go single format nowadays, unless you wanna see your company die a quick date.

People had this very same discussion when Square got into bed with Sony after dropping Nintendo. This is no different.

Times change.

True, IBM were certainly late, and they had to disable an SPU to keep yields acceptable in the end, but even if IBM were on top of things, Sony were very late with the dev kits. Developers didn’t even have basic prototype hardware to work with only months before launch, and the RSX was downclocked 50MHz very late in the game.

Plus there’s the overall cost of the PS3. Releasing a year later would have meant cheaper components, especially Blu-Ray diodes. I think Sony wanted to launch Christmas 2007 but they just couldn’t wait that long with Microsoft already on the market.

“Considering that Square has been releasing titles on all formats left right and centre for years now, I’m not sure what decade you’re living in.”

Yes, but during the period we’re discussing the important Square Enix franchises like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Front Mission, Kingdom Hearts, etc, all had their main sequels on Sony hardware. There were a few side-stories and remakes on other systems, but not the wholesale commitment to other platforms that we see today.

Different teams. Thats the way its been with all FFs.

Considering that Square has been releasing titles on all formats left right and centre for years now, I’m not sure what decade you’re living in.

“They would have known about it in 2004… which begs the question, why were they working on XIII two years before XII was released?”

Why wouldn’t they? It’s pretty common practise in the industry to work on titles in tandem.

Example: Call of Duty. Treyarch didn’t start working on World at War after Call of Duty 4 came out… they’d already been working on it for well over a year when CoD4 hits the shelves.

…possibly even earlier.

Then again, I think Sony took the PS3 to market a year earlier than they wanted because of the 360. Really the dev kits needed another year of polishing and the hardware suffered a number of down-clocks and cut-backs to ensure yields were good enough.

It’s not like the PS2 suddenly lost its install base as soon as the ps3 was sold, quite the opposite actually :/