Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-139.0.72.103-20150208102231/@comment-25467429-20150208193850

@Sly;

1. That is what I said. If htey wanted to do Infinity on the 360, they would've needed the budget to get it done themselves. They didn't, and MSFT didn't want to foot part of the bill like Sony did, so it didn't happen. As for all Bandai's F2P being on the PS3, again, that is more with Sony cooperating with them to do that from a longer standing relationship with their respective products than MSFT has with them, or is willing to invest in.

2. If you're talking about multi-platform consoles, you're talking Playstation 3 or 4, Xbox 360 or 1, Nintendo Wii or Wii U, and PC. Looking at the numbers and not just word-of-mouth, many console gamers tend to either own one of the other big 3 or a PC capable of playing a game (not necessarily at max graphics or anything, but at least playing it at stable settings). As you mentioned, and as I did, many who had played the series on the Sony consoles migrated over to the 360, though they did lose some fans becuase of the switch. They also lost some on the switch back, but with them claiming millions of downloads now for Infinity, that loss cannot be substantively massive, certainly not at a level to define success. Those left out may be vocal, but they are more than certainly a minority.

Leaving out Nintendo which has never had a console port of any Ace Combat game, and at least limiting the discussion to same generation devices for further technical reasons I rather not get into now, you would be looking for a PS3, 360, PC game, or a PS4, XB1, PC game as multiplatform. Given MSFT has mostly dried up any support of the 360, it would be added cost on PA's part to develop a game for that system knowing what little help they would normally receive is even less so now. That means Infinity would have had to either been a Sony exclusive anyway, or a PS3 and PC title, which is a rare combo. That also means that any future game, if they wanted to do multiplatform would either have to be Sony exclusive to be done on the PS3 (again because of lack of support on the 360 at this stage) or PS3 and PC, or be PS4, XB1, and PC.

I count the 3DS and Vita separate because they are handheld games which, despite having grown in complexity and breadth of content, are generally less than what is capable for a console game. Additioinally the mechanics and programing that must be done for a handheld game is different from a console, so you would be talking about forking the development process somewhat, which again butts against the cost issue that is so prevlaent for them right now. Furthermore very few handheld games go multi-platform, and generally only do so to the degree that they are paired with their parent console (i.e, Vita and PS3/4, 3DS and Wii/Wii U). I can't think of any game that plays on both the 3DS and Vita, or previously that played on both the GBA or DS.

Either way, my point is that if you look at the sale numbers, the majority of likely players of a new Ace Combat console game either already have the system the game would likely be on, or would end up buying the system it ends up on, just based on relative sales between Zero, 6, and AH. I will concede, however, that without some survery of Ace Combat players there's no way to be sure how many it amounts to who own multiple platforms.

3. Now you're just nitpicking. ;P