Hello! With updates #14, #15 and #16 released, it's time to move on to the next stage of new content development for the game.
The next feature on my to-do list is Platform Creation, and is the biggest chunk of content that will be added in the game so far. This will be the highest risk-to-reward source of money in the game, even more so than MMOs.
When setting up a new console, you'll need to select 4 separate parts that go into it: CPU, GPU, RAM and storage.
Each of these will have 3 separate tiers, with every following tier being on the higher end. Selecting the higher-end components will increase the maximum game scale, development difficulty, platform attractiveness, and platform production price. Aside from that, packing your console with the best parts will also require more time to properly finalize the platform.
The amount of time your development team spends working on the platform is up to you. More time spent means higher development costs, but higher overall platform quality. You can cheap out and spend the least possible amount of time working on the platform, but that means your platform will be more prone to hardware failure and overheating issues (which translates to more repairs needed), easier to have its firmware cracked, and possibly more nasty stuff, which you as a platform vendor don't want to happen.
Aside from that, various specialists might be available for hiring as the lead platform architects, which excel in specific tasks related to consoles. Hiring them would mean even higher development expenses, but they will also bring a boost to specific aspects of the platform, thanks to their world-class expertise.
You will need to find the right balance between production cost, platform attractiveness, game scale, and development difficulty in order to ensure that your platform is not only attractive to customers, but to developers, too. A platform with no games might as well not exist at all, so making sure your platform is easy to develop for (and does not have a draconic development license cost) will ensure that game developers will want to develop on your platform.
I do not want to spoil too much, so I'll stop here. Just like with MMOs, this piece of content will first be available on the 'develop' branch of the game for feedback from the community, before being finally released onto the default branch. Please understand that this content will require even more work than MMOs did, so don't be surprised if there are periods of radio silence for more than 2 weeks.
Thanks for reading, see you in the next progress report!