SN Systems Developer Survey

July 9, 2003, 5:38 am EDT
Total comments: 5

81 "developers and industry workers" have their say - 13.77 of them love GameCube.

PSToo good

New survey reveals the consoles developers love to make

BRISTOL, UK: 9 July 2003, Developers most enjoy making games for the PS2 according to a new online survey by independent tools developer SN Systems*. The current Sony platform was way ahead of its nearest market rivals with more than a third (38%) of industry experts putting the PS2 top of the list of consoles they have most enjoyed working with, ahead of other leading platforms Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo GameCube.

Games developers from across the industry registered their votes online (www.snsys.com) for the consoles they have most enjoyed developing games for. Sony's PlayStation 2 was the clear favourite with the latest generation consoles dominating the survey. Current high-street offerings Microsoft X-Box (21%), Nintendo GameCube (17%) and Game Boy Advance (10%) had the remaining share of the votes with older platforms failing to mount a significant challenge. Vintage classics Game Boy and SNES failed to claim any votes between them.

Top 10 Games Developer choices include:

Console - Vote

Playstation 2 38%

XBox 21%

Gamecube 17%

Gameboy Advance 10%

Nintendo 64 5%

Playstation 5%

Mega Drive/Genesis 3%

Saturn 1%

Andy Beveridge, Director at SN Systems commented, "Game developers are always keen to register their views and this new survey was no exception. Although some developers look back with nostalgia on developing for older platforms it's clear that the vast majority are pretty obsessed with the latest technology. It's interesting too that PS2 got top vote by quite a large margin despite claims from developers that it is more difficult to program. With next generation around the corner, it will be interesting to see how the current platforms fare in the face of new competition. Presumably developers will once again be itching to jump to the new technology but will they favour a tricky platform over ease of development next time around?"

*Survey conducted online among 81 games developers and industry workers.

Talkback

BonzeemerJuly 09, 2003

Let me get this straight. Devolopers have clearly
stated that the PS2 was hard to work with. And
Nintendo purposely made the GameCube easy to
work with by removing the bottle neck. Can
Nintendo do anything right? There is no love
for Nintendo anymore.

Fammy2000July 09, 2003

PS2 = good money. That's gotta be. Or hype. It's the "cool" machine.

oohhboyHong Hang Ho, Staff AlumnusJuly 09, 2003

I will believe in the force first than to believe in this.

DjunknownJuly 09, 2003

If you wanted to stretch some logic, PS2 has been around a little longer, devolopers know their way around and are familiar with the bumps and turns that is PS2.

While GC is easy to program, a lot of developers outside of Nintendo are smoking crack and really have no excuse in making sub-par games. Rogue Squadron 2 was cranked out in 8 months, and it was a polished game. Capcom made some eye popping graphics with Resident Evil 1 and 0, beating some cinematics on PS2. Rare's first and last game for Gamcube Star Fox Adventures too had some jaw dropping visuals as well. But for those games that are coming out on every system, they use the PS2 code which is hard to begin with and try to translate it on GC, resulting in some rough edges. Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance is an example.

The reason XboX edged out GC might be because A) its nearly a PC(easy to program right?), it just has some propietary technology and B) it offers Power and the space to go with it (9 gigs baby!). Though its kind of funny Genesis beat out SNES, even Saturn got some play and that sucker virtually had no 3rd party support!! So take this survey as you will, kind of like the other survey where even kids considered Nintendo too "kiddie".

Michael8983July 10, 2003

The survey sounds like it was really poorly orchestrated.
The fact that it was done online alone completely destroys its validity. Also, only 81 people took the survey? That's cr*p. Most were probably American developers too.
I'm dissapointed PGC even posted this as news.

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