Delusibeta
Banned
Besides, if you just want to something to plonk around on, Unity is free, and contains enough stuff to upload to Kongregate or Desura or something.
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MS teasing XNA successor for Build 2013 Day 2 keynote. (it's Unity)
- Thread starter ekim
- Start date
Do people seriously think that Nintendo and Sony are just going to hand out Dev kits FOR FREE?!
Again... ghettoising bedroom devs that don't fit the mold. Thanks. Appreciate that.
I can publish to a console right now and I'm not going to pretend that that's a bad thing.
Delusibeta
Banned
Yeah - I'm a bit unclear as to how I could publish a Unity game on the Xbone without getting it directly published by MS. The Unity license fee for Xbox 360 was prohibitively high (5 digits). Is it even possible to publish on the Xbone without MS directly involved, and if so, what does the Unity license cost?
For Wii U, we're developers and I've never been offered a free dev kit. I think that's being overstated. But the Unity license is free, which is pretty awesome. For PS4, I just assume the dev kit is out of our price range, and haven't looked in to that. Maybe I'll follow some of the resources posted here...
For Wii U, we're developers and I've never been offered a free dev kit. I think that's being overstated. But the Unity license is free, which is pretty awesome. For PS4, I just assume the dev kit is out of our price range, and haven't looked in to that. Maybe I'll follow some of the resources posted here...
w1gglyjones
Member
Only select developers, presumably those with proven track records and shipped titles.
It's not like any bedroom coder will just find a shiny PS4 shaped box posted through the door purely from filling in an online form.
Hell, if they are, I'll fill in the form.
Exactly. Exactly this. If that's really the reality of it, I'll fill out whatever paperwork they want. They can even have the rights to whatever game I spew out when I'm done. But that isn't how it works.
No, the Microsoft policies are not great for big time indie developers... but the others aren't great for the small time indie developers either and I'd much rather everyone gets a shot, albeit on different machines, than everyone homogenises and squeezes out the little guys.
That is exactly correct. You need to work your way towards making a console game, not jump directly into it just to "tinker around." Digital stores that are the center of any console should be curated.
That's like deciding to be a professional athlete today and being angry you can't be in the Olympics next month.
I'm glad Microsoft disagree with you.
Imagine if Apple agreed with him, lol
Edit: Well, Steve Jobs did... but he was wrong
fuck curated stores. Charge a store fee and let anyone develop.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
He sums it up for anyone to understand though. And these development platforms are available on something like PSN in a variety of ways. This includes PSM. I'm not a dev though so don't ask me for the all fine print.
Too much bloat. I don't think consoles need that when there's other avenues to test the waters then move up to the bigger players.
They don't disagree with me, actually. Good luck finding your game next to the digital versions of Forza 5 and RYSE in the same store.
He sums up his appraisal of it quite eloquently, I don't disagree. His belief is that console digital marketplaces should be places of esteem and regard, that you earn your place in them. That's a perfectly valid viewpoint, but it's not one I share. If the doors can be flung open, they should be flung open. That's how you sow the seeds of the next generation of developers.
Surfacing compelling content is another matter entirely. Hopefully that gets addressed by all of the come-one-come-all stores, not just the Xbox. And in case anyone from Microsoft is reading... no... "integrating Bing", whatever that actually turns out to mean, is not the way forward.
Have you seen, for example, 90% of what's on Steam Greenlight?
As a consumer, no way do I want to have to wade through those massive amounts of absolute shit.
Delusibeta
Banned
The problem with the attitude displayed by some in this thread is that it's one of the main reasons why XBLIG (and, to a lesser extent, PlayStation Mobile) sucked. Since any Tom, Dick & Harry could upload My First Fart App, it meant the service was flooded with shit, and really only the early games such as Cthulhu Saves The World and ZOM3IES! could break out and become decent-sized successes. As a result, nobody bothered wading through the mess, so nothing else sold in large numbers, so everyone serious or semi-serious abandoned it, which reduces the amount of good games in the pipeline and round we go again. Honestly? If you want to cut your teeth on game development, upload some stuff to Kongregate or Newgrounds. That's how Team Meat got their break, after all.
I agree, but from the opposite end. The cynicism and snobbery around how to treat small indie devs is what got them ghettoised in the first place. You even keep doing it now telling me to bog off to mobile devices or flash games or wherever else.
All of these large, open platforms have an issue with surfacing the quality content. Just because no-one has cracked it yet doesn't mean you need someone holding your hand to make sure you don't have to be offended by lesser efforts.
Ok, so here is the problem with non-curated stores (like Apple and Google).
So they are not curated.. but you still need app discovery. How do you do that.
Search? Sure.. but what do you search on? Name? (SEO'ed) Keywords? (SEO'ed) Description? (SEO'ed) Category/genre? (SEO'ed)
Alphabetical? Everyone would call their game A Aardvark Adventure or some such?
Pricing? We are already seeing it.. a race to the bottom in pricing causing CONSUMERS to feel that 99¢ is a fair price point, $4.99 is exorbitant, and $2.99 means "wait for it to go on sale for 99¢"
Revenue? Again Apple did this and we are already seeing the gaming of it.. By releasing free or cheap apps, and including inexpensive IAP.. but IAP is recurring meaning that 99¢ or free app is generating $10 of revenue per download thus "out-revenue-ing" "better" games at say $4.99 or $6.99.
We already see life without a curated marketplace.. Again Google and Apple. And as a developer who has apps out on both, there are upsides to it, but also serious downsides. Pricing, visibility, active lifespan, pricing, store support, pricing, etc.
If the App Store model was released wholesale to XBONE, collated directly with AAA titles, it would be the death of digital distribution on the platform. AAA titles would have next to ZERO visibility on the store front, and the top listings would look just like they do on App Store and google play, only with the lesser support of Windows store.
What's funny about this conversation is that you guys are saying "I want a non-curated store for XBONE!!" and many many many developers AND CONSUMERS are saying the OPPOSITE of the for apple. They WANT a curated interface on App Store. If even an alternate way of accessing the store. They want an editorial store front where arbitrarily deemed best of class apps can be given exposure and lifted from the race to the bottom that is the organic "gamed" listings.
There's a place for both.. if you are a guy just trying to get out there in the world, a submission process like the App Store is incredible. But if you are a best-in-class developer who has seen game after game after game of his had praise upon praise heaped upon them, there's nothing worse than seeing activity on your game drop off after a week in the top 50 only to be knocked out by the next zynga f2p title and angry birds skin/clone.
I never at all intended to suggest what MS announced here was worthless. It absolutely has it's place. But this is NOT what they needed to announce. They needed to say "yes we will essentially be moving the XBLIG program to Windows Store, and in addition we will now facilitate more serious indie developers to self publish directly to the Xbox Live Arcade just like our competitors."
Plain and simple.
So they are not curated.. but you still need app discovery. How do you do that.
Search? Sure.. but what do you search on? Name? (SEO'ed) Keywords? (SEO'ed) Description? (SEO'ed) Category/genre? (SEO'ed)
Alphabetical? Everyone would call their game A Aardvark Adventure or some such?
Pricing? We are already seeing it.. a race to the bottom in pricing causing CONSUMERS to feel that 99¢ is a fair price point, $4.99 is exorbitant, and $2.99 means "wait for it to go on sale for 99¢"
Revenue? Again Apple did this and we are already seeing the gaming of it.. By releasing free or cheap apps, and including inexpensive IAP.. but IAP is recurring meaning that 99¢ or free app is generating $10 of revenue per download thus "out-revenue-ing" "better" games at say $4.99 or $6.99.
We already see life without a curated marketplace.. Again Google and Apple. And as a developer who has apps out on both, there are upsides to it, but also serious downsides. Pricing, visibility, active lifespan, pricing, store support, pricing, etc.
If the App Store model was released wholesale to XBONE, collated directly with AAA titles, it would be the death of digital distribution on the platform. AAA titles would have next to ZERO visibility on the store front, and the top listings would look just like they do on App Store and google play, only with the lesser support of Windows store.
What's funny about this conversation is that you guys are saying "I want a non-curated store for XBONE!!" and many many many developers AND CONSUMERS are saying the OPPOSITE of the for apple. They WANT a curated interface on App Store. If even an alternate way of accessing the store. They want an editorial store front where arbitrarily deemed best of class apps can be given exposure and lifted from the race to the bottom that is the organic "gamed" listings.
There's a place for both.. if you are a guy just trying to get out there in the world, a submission process like the App Store is incredible. But if you are a best-in-class developer who has seen game after game after game of his had praise upon praise heaped upon them, there's nothing worse than seeing activity on your game drop off after a week in the top 50 only to be knocked out by the next zynga f2p title and angry birds skin/clone.
I never at all intended to suggest what MS announced here was worthless. It absolutely has it's place. But this is NOT what they needed to announce. They needed to say "yes we will essentially be moving the XBLIG program to Windows Store, and in addition we will now facilitate more serious indie developers to self publish directly to the Xbox Live Arcade just like our competitors."
Plain and simple.
Delusibeta
Banned
Odds are low, open source and console development generally speaking do not mix.
LukasTaves
Member
Well, for starters, Ms has something that neither ios or android have: Everyone's favorite Live feature, the dashboard ads.
Turning the console on is all that's needed for Ms to start selling you games.
I don't know what SEO means, so I can't answer that
Why would you promote app discovery alphabetically? It really doesn't make a sense XD
If a race to the bottom is that much of a problem the answer is quite simple: Make the bottom high enough so it won't undercut higher budgeted productions. That's something that Ms even did this gen on 360, btw.
Having said that, I don't think the race to the bottom is that much of an issue. iOs has new hits by the dozens, and everyone talks about increasing support in both quantity and budget size.
Also, Steam it's curated, but the higher sales volumes still comes from sales. You just have to balance out price x number of sales, it's the total revenue that matters.
I don't see your point there, sorry xD
There's a lot more you can do to expose news and worthy apps.
Editor's picks, community picks, paid slots for publishers that want to advertise their products, automatic picks based on a profile of your purchases. Other than paid slots, that's all things that Ms already started doing with the 8.1 store, btw.
Also, unlike ios and android the store is not the only place you can advertise and sell your games, big publishers will have those big ads coming on TV, movie trailers, outdoors and whatnot.
Fair enough. I can understand your reasons... But I still think that something like an app store for xbox one would be miles better than what xblig was in terms of exposure and sales.
LukasTaves
Member
On the other hand, if were not for steam greenlight, you wouldn't have a chance to play those 10% of the games that you would play and might even enjoy.
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