Why Is It So Difficult To Allow Cross-Platform Play? 389
cookiej writes "I just got the most recent version of the Madden franchise ('10) for the PS3. Can somebody explain to me why EA has separate networks for the different platforms, only allowing players to compete with people using the same console? Back in the day, there were large discrepancies between the consoles, but these days it seems like the Xbox and the PS3 are at least near the same level. After so many releases for this franchise, they've got to have a fairly standardized protocol for networking; it seems arbitrary not to let them compete. Or am I just missing something obvious? Is it just a matter of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network not working together?"
Re:My prediction (Score:5, Informative)
One may be more comfortable, decreasing the cognitive dissonance associated with translating mental (re)actions to hand actions.
That's not what cognitive dissonance is. Cognitive dissonance is when you take an action that contradicts or is not explained by your beliefs about how you should have acted, and you change your beliefs after the fact in order to explain the action you took. It is not just when you have some kind of mental uncomfortableness. I'm sure wikipedia has examples.
Re:same as the PC (Score:1, Informative)
There is cross-platform available between Xbox 360 and Games for Windows. It's just that no-one really bothers to implement it. I only know of one game that did support it.
You can't cross-platform play between PS3 and Xbox 360 simply because they use their own matchmaking services.
Re:its a really simple answer (Score:2, Informative)
Uh, no, otherwise PowerPC Macs wouldn't be able to talk TCP/IP with Intel-based PCs. What you do is define the protocol to use one endian and the platforms that use the opposite just convert incoming data. Usually you'd define the on-wire protocol to use big-endian (also called "network endian" - it's also what TCP/IP uses). The same thing works for file formats, though there a third option that seems to be reasonably popular is to allow for both endiannesses in the format, using a magic word to distinguish between them. Then all ports of the software need to include the ability to swap bytes as they read a file.
IIRC both consoles have a fast instruction to swap the bytes of a word, so the overhead is trivial. Endianness is a complete non-issue regarding network interoperability.
Re:Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
That's pretty much it. My buddy is a test coordinator at EA, and his stories about games failing for the stupidest guideline violations never ends.
And I think that's what it's really about: each company has their own guidelines (from Nintendo's save screen longer than 0.15 seconds has to have a message that you can read, to Sony's all of "PLAYSTATION 3" has to be capitalized). If a version of the game was submitted to one console maker, got passed, but failed at a different one, that means they need to change code for a version and still make sure it's compatible with the older versions that passed under someone else's watch.
And never mind shinanigans related to updating the game (or virtual lack of ability in Nintendo's case).
Re:Anonymous Coward. (Score:4, Informative)
Where did you see that?
I'm pretty sure Microsoft by default handles all of the server for matchmaking and leaderboards. I remember back with the first Xbox that Microsoft had to develop a protocol to allow Live games to communicate with the game company's server. This was done at the insistence of EA, who would not release titles with online play unless they could control the servers. This is why you have to accept a separate EULA and make a separate account to online with some EA games. I remember games like Burnout 3 and Revenge not working right for a few days after launch because of problems connecting to EA's servers. This is also why old EA games like Timesplitters 3 no longer work on the Xbox while you can still play all(?) of the older games that rely on Microsoft's servers.
As shown by what they've already done, EA has enough leverage to force Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo to allow cross-platform play. I doubt you'd find any resistance from Nintendo, as they lack a truly unified online play system like Microsoft and Sony have.
Re:same as the PC (Score:3, Informative)
Umm, FPS games are by definition, not typically "Designed" for consoles.
Nobody said mice are better, but they are much better at controlling first person shooters for obvious reasons.
For a racing game when you don't have a joystick/wheel, or a fighter, I'd much rather a controller than a keyboard+mouse. It's very simple, called "use the right tool for the job".
Round hole, round peg. Easy comparison to your own: ever tried playing quake on a g1 or an iphone? It's kind of, you know, pretty hard to do. some interfaces work for certain things.
Likewise, a VR interface (helmet, gloves, etc) even if it had FPS controls, is pretty horrible for most FPS games.
Cross platform console work (Score:2, Informative)
The Xbox and Xbox 360 use encryption implemented in the kernel as part of the Xbox Live matchmaking. There are many reasons for this but the main ones are security to help stop people altering the packets and cheating. This encryption is a requirement mandated by Microsoft before a title can be published. The encryption does mean the other consoles cannot decode those packets, unless a lot of effort is spent to reverse engineer the encryption and Xbox Live protocols. I have a feeling that if a publisher/developer did reverse engineer the Live encryption and protocols and used that to get Sony and Xbox consoles to join the same game then Microsoft would probably pull the plug on that title.
During development of titles I've had the Microsoft and Sony consoles happily joining the same games, but during development the encryption can be turned off. The PC build also had no problems joining the network session. This is because such titles tend to have the same network code and communicate the same data (before it gets encrypted).
It's a politcal decison from MS (Score:1, Informative)
I've worked on a game(http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/60210) that we could play across consoles. MS made us disallow cross-console play.
Re:Obvious (Score:3, Informative)
This is truth. I've worked on networking on a 360/PS3 title at EA.
MSFT does NOT allow going outside of their secure gateway based networking system. No exceptions unless you want to pay huge amounts of money to convince them to allow otherwise (I think only Final Fantasy XI has done this). It is possible for games that use Games For Windows Live because it implements the same kind of secure gateway networking environment that Xbox360 uses.
Sony is not as strict, and the PS3 SDK implements traditional socket based networking API.
Re:Obvious (Score:2, Informative)
Network code (Score:2, Informative)
I used to work at EA and once had a conversation with a guy who wrote network code for an EA sports title. Basically, instead of proper servers controlling game state and updating clients, everyone sent their controller infomation and each client worked out where everything was independently.
I said "but since difference processors calculate floating point values differently, you'll never be able to play against different consoles"
I guess they haven't fixed it yet.... a lot of those titles are rehashed each year under great pressure and so have very old legacy code. I heard FIFA was still written in C (not C++) and that there was still a few bits of genesis code in the hockey game. They wouldn't have time to scrap it and start again, so likely this problem will be around for a while.
"antifeature" (Score:3, Informative)
It is called anti-features. The "Windows 7 Sins" website mentioned it. I love that term. When it costs more for a vendor to remove a feature they sort of got for free - natural effect of smart design - yet they remove it anyway for political, administrative, and marketing reasons - it is an anti-feature. Manually and permanently reducing amount of concurrent TCP/IP connections available in Windows NT Workstation versus Windows NT Server (which does not cap the limit) despite both versions sharing the same code - antifeature. Limiting amount of applications that can be open simultaneously on one Windows version versus not doing so in another, when both share the same code again - antifeature. Filtering game client list based on platform, despite protocol potentially capable of providing inter-platform gameplay - antifeature. Everything that is destined for the consumer goes through marketing before it leaves the vendor. It is the fear of not making enough money.
Re:vendor lock in (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why would they... (Score:4, Informative)
It's short for "verisimilitudinously".
It's the platforms fault. (Score:2, Informative)
"Because the [CONSOLE] system is proprietary, connections between [CONSOLE] platforms and non-
[CONSOLE] platforms (including, but not limited to, PCs, Macs, cell phones, [CONSOLE], [CONSOLE], [CONSOLE], [CONSOLE], [CONSOLE], and iPods) are not allowed for security and customer-satisfaction reasons."
That's directly out of their requirements guidelines. Without following those guidelines, you can't get a license to release the game on whatever console.
Re:OT: who to blame for economic woes (vendor lock (Score:3, Informative)
Just out of interest which government legislation forced banks throughout the world to bundle crappy mortgages up with good ones and sell them on?
As I understand it, US banks & mortgage lenders along with Freddie & Fannie bundled these "toxic" mortgages into debt-instruments that they then sold & traded. Many financial institutions in other countries got caught holding some of that debt, as well as holding other US debt-instruments whose value collapsed when the US banks & mortgage lenders got in trouble from all the bad mortgage paper they still held.
The economy is global. When the US financial market suffers, so do other countries' financial markets. Just as when the financial markets in, for example, Hong Kong or the UK suffer, so does the US financial market, among others.
Strat