Why are all of the shmups on the XBOX 360?

[jkoch]

I really have a hard time understanding why all of the best games are exclusive to the American console that hasn't sold particularly well in Japan, rather than the PS3 and Wii. Can anyone shed some light?

[Kaiser]

I really have a hard time understanding why all of the best games are exclusive to the American console that hasn't sold particularly well in Japan, rather than the PS3 and Wii. Can anyone shed some light?

Cave is a bunch of egoistic cultural morons period.

[Jeneki]

(shrug) Console release exclusives always seem random. I don't expect small developers to divide their resources over multiple platforms. One could just as easliy ask why I need to buy a Wii to play new Milestone games.

[emphatic]

Because all games are region free on the PS3.

[peace4myheart]

because it is easier and cheaper to develop on XBOX 360. XBOX 360 = PC (more or less)

[Darkseed]

It is quite ironic considering the PS3's huge install base over in Japan. I mean the PS2 still outsells the 360 over there. On top of that the PS3 games are region free which would broaden the market for shmups bigtime. The D-Pad is a million times better than the 360's (even though I only use joysticks).

Also,the CELL processor with its insane number crunching capabilities should be ideal for shmups with tons of shit blowing up all over the place.

I hope that in time we will see some true shmups on PS3, unlike Soldner x which I was hyped for (I hadnt joined this forum yet) and was hugely disapointed with.

EDIT: I predict the PS3 will be the first console to do proper Saturn emulation (Wii is not 100%).

[Jockel]

blablabla this is like the 4th thread asking the exact same question.

[neorichieb1971]

People like inferior tech, thats why in order of sales the wii comes first, xbox360 comes 2nd and PS3 comes last.

Cave could put a whole documentary on a blu ray..

Cave should have put more emphasis on the PS3 in the first place. Sony could write an emulator in 3 months for all Caves hardware.

[emphatic]

People like inferior tech, thats why in order of sales the wii comes first, xbox360 comes 2nd and PS3 comes last.

Cave could put a whole documentary on a blu ray..

Cave should have put more emphasis on the PS3 in the first place. Sony could write an emulator in 3 months for all Caves hardware.

It's amazing how great Sony is. Truly remarkable.

[Kron]

Yeah, Shame they don't like games though.

[NR777]

People like inferior tech, thats why in order of sales the wii comes first, xbox360 comes 2nd and PS3 comes last.

Cave could put a whole documentary on a blu ray..

Cave should have put more emphasis on the PS3 in the first place. Sony could write an emulator in 3 months for all Caves hardware.

Uh huh...Sony also discovered fire and invented the wheel.

[hirounder]

Question that was asked million times already, here are my 5 cents...

For me main reason is the fact that MS (unlike Sony I guess) acted very friendly towards smaller japanese developers all the way back in 2004/05, probably lured them in with small (or no) licence costs, free development kits and things like that. I remember companies like Grev, Treasure, Cave, Warashi, Success and so on were listed as 360 official supporters before console was even released, then Senko no Ronde RevX was announced in Fall of '05 and that was like first snowball that would start avalanche later on.

Also another thing is, I don't think all these developers would profit that much with multiplatform releases and switching their platforms right now, I mean 2D STGs are niche genre even in Japan, and I'm sure anyone into them already has 360 over there. Say Cave wants to go multi, their development costs would probably have to double, but would their sales double as well? Like I said, I don't think so.

Number of sold consoles when it comes to hardcore niche genres doesn't matter that much either, if I remember correctly Shikigami no Shiro III sold double as much on 360 then it did on Wii. Same way that that Treasure STG that never came to be would probably sold more than Sin&Punishment II did on Wii. Wii fans will hate me but it had to be said

[Darkseed]

People like inferior tech, thats why in order of sales the wii comes first, xbox360 comes 2nd and PS3 comes last.

Cave could put a whole documentary on a blu ray..

Cave should have put more emphasis on the PS3 in the first place. Sony could write an emulator in 3 months for all Caves hardware.

Uh huh...Sony also discovered fire and invented the wheel.

Umm ooookaaayy.

[Udderdude]

Also,the CELL processor with its insane number crunching capabilities should be ideal for shmups with tons of shit blowing up all over the place.

You really don't understand anything about game development or multi-core programming if you think that's a benefit.

[NR777]

Umm ooookaaayy.

Should I start including sarcasm tags in my posts?

[Darkseed]

Also,the CELL processor with its insane number crunching capabilities should be ideal for shmups with tons of shit blowing up all over the place.

You really don't understand anything about game development or multi-core programming if you think that's a benefit.

Hey Im no dev, but isnt it common knowledge that for ex.games like Super Stardust benefit from the Cell?

I also keep hearing that emulation is mostly reliant on raw CPU power. Isnt the Cell supposed to be a beast in that area?

[Darkseed]

Umm ooookaaayy.

Should I start including sarcasm tags in my posts?

My bad. I visit many forums and your post came off as the typical passive/aggresive hater.

[Skykid]

Prior to the release of the PS3 I remember a proposal for some titles (or even compilations) by Cave being deemed too 'retro' by Sony to appear in the early days of their new console. Lets face it, with that kind of attitude Sony don't deserve support from developers like Cave.
As Kron put it so succinctly, if they have no interest in cultivating a diverse gaming userbase as much as they do an 'image', then they have no genuine interest in games at all.
Sony is expert in marketing, which served them well when they joined the industry - but there is a lack of foresight when it comes to evolving their company profile. I see titles like Little Big Planet and LocoRoco suddenly attempting to pull in line with the DS and Wii to appeal to the new casual market - but as good as those games are, they jar with the inital marketing image that they went out with: that of a multimedia, blu-ray packing mega-machine that does all sorts of tricks. Emphasis on gaming kind of got lost in the mix there, and by snubbing terrific companies like Cave and building developer-unfriendly hardware, they've kind of lost the advantage.

If you want to play Cave ports, stop moaning about it and buy a frickin' 360. Allegiance is for plums - the console is cheap, accessible, and pumped full to the brim with great shmups.

[Udderdude]

Also,the CELL processor with its insane number crunching capabilities should be ideal for shmups with tons of shit blowing up all over the place.

You really don't understand anything about game development or multi-core programming if you think that's a benefit.

Hey Im no dev, but isnt it common knowledge that for ex.games like Super Stardust benefit from the Cell?

I also keep hearing that emulation is mostly reliant on raw CPU power. Isnt the Cell supposed to be a beast in that area?

The Cell is a scientific multi-core processor, designed for massive parallel data processing. This is NOT the same thing as a videogame, which requires all data to be processed in order and be finished at the same time, so that the game state is updated. Any supposed benefit you heard about it is the Sony hype machine lying to you.

Hardware from 5 years ago was good enough to run even the most intense shmups. You don't need a Cell processor to run Futari.

[Ex-Cyber]

Don't forget that most "arcade boards" these days are basically just dolled up Windows PCs. That pretty much biases arcade ports in general to 360 unless they were basically developed for another console first and then turned into arcade games (e.g. Tekken 6, Tatsunoko v. Capcom).

Hey Im no dev, but isnt it common knowledge that for ex.games like Super Stardust benefit from the Cell?

Not that I know of. Maybe they took advantage of it for some effects, but I doubt that the game really depends on it. Basically, if you're writing a shmup for current-gen hardware and it's CPU-limited, you're probably doing it wrong.

I also keep hearing that emulation is mostly reliant on raw CPU power. Isnt the Cell supposed to be a beast in that area?

Emulation mostly relies on two things:

1) Having enough (of the right kinds of) memory
2) single-threaded performance (some emulators benefit from multi-core, but it usually doesn't scale beyond two cores)

Cell can crunch a lot of numbers and can do a lot on a parallel workload, but emulation tends to have a lot of factors that force it into serial evaluation.

[NR777]

My bad. I visit many forums and your post came off as the typical passive/aggresive hater.

Well, I was mocking what I saw to be blatant console fanboyism. I am loyal to games, not hardware, and I really think brandmonkeys should stick to posting on gamefaqs.

[EPS21]

The 360 is the niche console over there, exacerbated by Idolm@sters' success on it, Dream Club, various visual novels releases, etc. So it makes sense that a niche genre like shmups have their releases on it as well, and also pointed out by hirounder, seems the shmup devs have been supporting the 360 for a long time already, and given that these consoles are showing some age now, this won't change at least until the next gen consoles arrive.

[jkoch]

Sorry for asking a question that has already been asked. I did try to search first, but couldn't find anything.

Thanks for all of the answers, especially MS being friendly to small developers, the 360 niche console status, and Sony possibly deeming shmups to be "too retro" (although I can't see why they couldn't be PSN releases). It makes at least a little more sense to me now.

I don't want to buy a 360 because I don't want another box in my TV stand, and also because there would be the region issue.

[elvis]

For me main reason is the fact that MS (unlike Sony I guess) acted very friendly towards smaller japanese developers all the way back in 2004/05, probably lured them in with small (or no) licence costs, free development kits and things like that. I remember companies like Grev, Treasure, Cave, Warashi, Success and so on were listed as 360 official supporters before console was even released, then Senko no Ronde RevX was announced in Fall of '05 and that was like first snowball that would start avalanche later on.

This is far more likely. I doubt highly that "Cave chose Microsoft". My guess is "Microsoft chose Cave".

Having spent the last decade and a half working for big bastard corporates of all shapes and sizes, I've seen countless times what vendors will do when they want to expand their business in your region. For a few months/years, they'll treat you like a king and litter the ground you walk on with gold and champagne. You (or more realistically, your stupid middle-to-upper management) sing their praises to all their golf buddies. Soon your vendor "friends" get their market share up in your area, and then all of a sudden the party is over. Licenses costs are at an all time high, subscription renewals come around quicker and quicker, and your haemorrhaging cash.

Microsoft want the Japanese market, simply because they don't have it. Courting small dev companies is Microsoft 101 for getting into markets. I'm VERY interested to see how long the fierce Japanese loyalty to their own will last, particularly given the state of world economics at the moment.

[brokenhalo]

People like inferior tech, thats why in order of sales the wii comes first, xbox360 comes 2nd and PS3 comes last.

Cave could put a whole documentary on a blu ray..

Cave should have put more emphasis on the PS3 in the first place. Sony could write an emulator in 3 months for all Caves hardware.

a whole documentary you say? tell me more please....

[neorichieb1971]

Its well documented that I don't like Microsoft. As much as I like games i'm not going to buy a machine that is prone to breaking down from a country the other side of the world to play shmups.

PCB's are pretty much reliable if you look after them. I'm quite happy to pay a few hundred ££££ for a kit/pcb of said Cave game and just play the original version and I like buying them at un-depreciating prices.

For myself, buying a PS3 region free Cave game by default is a much better option. Even if 1% of PS3 owners in Japan bought a Cave game, wouldn't that be MORE copies sold than the 360 version. If it really is Sony's fault then so be it, there are planks in every corperation and i'm sure Sony have some retards in there. The world isn't designed around common sense.

[Estebang]

Just embrace the madness, man. There's nothing you can do about Cave never releasing a single one of their games for the PS3. The fact that some games are exclusive to some consoles (and/or are region-locked) has always been the curse of videogaming, and it's not a terribly difficult one to accept.

[Vyxx]

Why do so many people make this topic? If you want to play them bad enough, you'll import a 360.

[emphatic]

Why do so many people make this topic? If you want to play them bad enough, you'll import a 360.

Because you can't search the shmups forum from a PS3?

[sven666]

because Ken Kutaragi and Segata Sanshiro had a showdown outside of the Cave office, Kutaragi really went to town on Segata and SEGA went tits up because of this, Kutaragi is living the rest of his day in a slow medium-security resort and as a result Cave had to turn to the third option.

(Nintendont doesnt count cause Cave games contain blood and cant be controlled by waving a dildo around the livingroom)

..aaaand there you have it.