And that just points to why there will never be one. You can’t satisfy everyone with one.

But you not wanting the go with the argument about hardware is up to you. But the fact that we still need compliance testing on PCs for hardware means well you are wrong. The same reason why Valve wants you to take the hardware survey, the same reason why companies want your DXDiag files. Hardware really does matter when developing a game. So everyone with an xbox has an xbox and if I make the game for one 360 it will be the same on everyone elses 360 unless there is a hardware fault. It will not be the games fault.

What i would like to point to is no matter how much i would love one standard for whatever, just look at the Blue Ray/HD-DVD fiasco. They pulled it together for the standard of DVD, but then went right back into their old ways by trying to make their own version “stand out” but only creating a mess again. Not sure if consoles would work the same ever, but it is an interesting idea to wonder how it would be to play all the games on one console. If you could get Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to cooperate and each pitch in on harware, you could have a system that could be backwards compatible with PS2, XBox, and gamecube, how sweet would that be? ;)

Anyway, the argument FOR consoles was that it was easier because you knew what the hardware was. So why do developers constantly whine about how HARD it is to develop for consoles, especially the new ones? I thought it was easier?

I’d also argue that it is not cheaper to buy consoles than it is to upgrade your computer every 5 years as well. This may have been an issue 5-10 years ago, but not any more. PC costs keep going down, Console costs keep going up (I’m looking at you Sony).

My comment about games for women wasn’t meant to imply that they are a waste of time or whatever, only that you don’t need to make some sappy ass game about pretty little fairies to appeal to the female demographic. They like smart, cool, interesting, engaging, and awesome games, just like the guys do…but lopping heads off of zombies to get blood gushing out really isn’t that interesting to most of them. Women like constructive gameplay and men like destructive gameplay (as a generalized rule).

But there is another reason we’ll never have one platform: competition.

What is one of the biggest problem with abstraction to obscene levels? Well one is performance. If I see you using all the standards that work across all platforms, but I know how to tweak my code to run faster than yours on one popular platform, I’m damn well going to do it. Why? Money. If I can make my game/software run better/faster by breaking the abstraction, on one hand I’m taking a chance, on the other hand I’m creating a product users will like better. And the end user doesn’t care that you followed the standards, they only care that my product runs faster and better.

There are other problems, size of storage is another.

The same goes for hardware vendors. DX9 should run the same on all cards, but it doesn’t. If one hardware vendor can add something to get ahead they sure will. If one can add more storage space they will.

That’s the thing about standards: they are voluntary.

Speaking of dx9, xml, all these standards, we are already more and more moving towards the idea of one “platform” – not one set of hardware but one or a few sets of abstractions. But it’s an idea bigger than just gaming. But even then, I don’t really know if there will ever be one set of abstractions, since new versions of xml, xsl, html, java, c, C# etc, are constantly coming out.

It is a complaint that’s been around for decades. It’s getting better, but we’ll never ever get down to one, because it violates human nature and the desire to compete and progress.