Ninja Theory co-founder explains studio's move to multiplatform development
With the release of Heavenly Sword, Ninja Theory had seemingly established itself as a high-profile, PS3-exclusive developer. However, the studio's next game, Enslaved, a gritty action version of the same classical Chinese story Journey to the West from which Dragon Ball originates, is going to be multiplatform.
"Heavenly Sword came out pretty early on the PS3," Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades explained to CVG, "and we sold, I think, a million and a half copies, and that's still not enough as an independent studio to break even. The publisher potentially breaks even at that point, but the developers don't. It's just that when so many people have Xbox -- I mean over half the market or more has Xbox 360s -- why limit yourself to one platform?" Without a clearly dominant platform like the PlayStation 1 or 2, he said, it's difficult to profit from console-exclusive games.
"I think people are going to hold off for a long time before getting on to the next generation," Antoniades added. "I think everyone's licking their wounds and releasing new games to try and keep this current generation going. I'm hoping it doesn't come too soon either because we want to make at least a couple more games in this generation." Squeezing in a few more current-gen releases sounds like a good plan -- it'd be tough to be totally broke and have to start developing on new hardware again.
