Exactly. Stuff like this wouldn't happen today because someone would want to be "first" in posting it on the Internet. Like it is some kind of race. Or it would end up being a marketing ploy of some sort. Back in the day it was flat out to screw someone.
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haha yes. it's almost an industry standard now to share the progress. screwing someone is probably left for the lawyers and we don't really see it.
on a separate note, it was also extremely difficult to port games to different devices. a lot of times you had an independent version for every console. some were so badly done they were barely even playable. i remember a game where they were actually trying to make it work, but ended up looking like they wanted to screw someone.
I would take a guess at what game you were referencing but there were so many that were bad on at least one platform but good on another. Those independent teams not working together certainly complicated making anything cohesive across platforms.
Today it is no problem. Simply check a box in most development programs to create a version for another platform. While this helps keep things cohesive across the platforms, it has also almost completely removed any "differences" that might have been optimized between platforms. Such as speed in the Genesis port while sound or color would be optimized on the SNES version.
yes. now engines allow broader builds so you can make games for mobile devices, consoles, or pcs, and the differences between each device in the same category is probably not as great as they were in the past. we still have exclusives that are completely based on a single platform. so i kinda like the current state of game development as well as where it's headed.
I prefer to look at the exclusives to see what a platform can do rather than look at cross platform games. I just don't think developers are going to put that much effort into optimizing for any one particular platform when doing cross platform. Instead, I see more developers holding back one version that could be clearly better so that the experience is "similar" across the board. Such a shame.
yea i see that happening, though some will put a little more weight on one targeted device.
but holding back is just laziness.