Technological and business questions

[soundguy]

Hello


Here are some tough questions that are on the mind of adventure game developers, and that i've been asking around most of the developers in the conference.

I wonder about what it's like to develope adventure games for XBOX.
When approaching adventure game development for PC as an independent developer you are offered many tools, engines, code samples, and other goodies that help you ease your way into actual game creation, and not lose focus on building a game engine.

What is it like if you would want to develop a game that run on an XBOX (and other platforms you have experience with ? ) ?
Where do you start with, and where is a good place to seek help ?

What's the diffrence in costs while developing for XBOX (and other non-pc platforms) other than owning a DS ? Do you need to pay license fee to the console creator, like Microsoft ?

How successful commercially are games for XBOX? as far as i know the console game market consists mainly of US gamers that acre less about adventrue games than the PC gamer. How does that fit with your business plan ?

The sales figures for adventure games on PC have been published in Just adventrue, but to consider the XBOXas a viable market, us indies lack some needed data. can you share some of you knowedge about it ?

Thanks in advance !
Oded

[axelkothe]

What's the diffrence in costs while developing for XBOX (and other non-pc platforms) other than owning a DS ? Do you need to pay license fee to the console creator, like Microsoft ?

You have to be an approved developer or work for a publisher that si approved before you are allowed to develop for console systems. Then you usually need to buy development systems which come at a very steep price, exspacially for a small developer.

Additionally, you have to pay Microsoft (or Nintendo or Sony) a licence fee for EACH copy of the game. This is afaik about 3-9$!

How successful commercially are games for XBOX? as far as i know the console game market consists mainly of US gamers that acre less about adventrue games than the PC gamer. How does that fit with your business plan ?

Afaik are there about as many Xboxes sold in Europa as there are in the US, so this should not be much different from the PC situation. But it is true that console gamers generally tend to play more action or sports games, less adventures and other slower games.

[track7]

Well ...WOW what a question.

First of all, we would like to say that we have not had any experience in bringing the game out on Xbox 360 yet. However, from all the researching that has been done regarding this, and talking to the programmers, Microsoft made it easy to take a ready made game and basically port it to Xbox 360. Now regarding extra features, well that's the beauty of porting. Yes many people say , oh no not another port, but they seem to be forgetting the nice goodies such as Xbox live, and what it has to offer. I'm not saying that we will be online, but we will be online in order to be on a leaderboard with other 5.000.000 users world wide. Make friends, talk to each other about the games, and as well as compare what kind of achievements you have accomplished. That is replay value for each game on this type of console and that's where we are heading.

Now regarding costs and fees , yes Microsoft does get royalty fees for each game sold. We could say that everyone is heading towards the next generation console. And so we believe this type of market is perfect especially the time we are heading towards it.

Cost depend on Microsoft or any other company willing to give us their dev kit...I wouldn't say willing, but applying and buying!.

adventure games like tomb raider has made top sales, i believe 1.2 million since it has come out. That's not too shabby if you ask me, and adventure games are still alive but they need something new and innovative, that many seem to be forgetting. I believe we have a mixture of many other games, Tomb Raider, Broken Sword, A little bit of Pray, and an innovative inventory system!..

This is as much as i can answer.

[Noone]

Then you usually need to buy development systems which come at a very steep price, exspacially for a small developer.

Ain't XNA and Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition for free?

[track7]

Well honestly, at the moment we are looking into it, We have contacted microsoft and we have an NDA form from them. There is no way of knowing the prices as of yet. I believe though there are some prices to pay for something like this. We still haven't purchased it yet. But maybe your right, We will have to see very soon.

[soundguy]

Thanks for your asnwers.

Oded

[soundguy]

BTW what tools and engines are you using to make it on PC ?

[Mnemonic]

Ain't XNA and Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition for free?

The current release (XNA Game Studio *Express* Beta 2) is free, but 1) you can't make games for x360 yet 2) once you'll be able to target xbox, you won't be allowed to make commercial games with it. There will be XNA Game Studio Professional sometime in the future, but it certainly isn't going to be free, nor will it allow anyone to make a commercial game for xbox. You'll still need to be approved by MS.

[track7]

BTW what tools and engines are you using to make it on PC ?

Full pixel shader2 support. Depth shadows, Paralax mapping. We also have options for high end machines (pixel shaders 3 and hi-res maps)

[track7]

Ain't XNA and Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition for free?

The current release (XNA Game Studio *Express* Beta 2) is free, but 1) you can't make games for x360 yet 2) once you'll be able to target xbox, you won't be allowed to make commercial games with it. There will be XNA Game Studio Professional sometime in the future, but it certainly isn't going to be free, nor will it allow anyone to make a commercial game for xbox. You'll still need to be approved by MS.

alex my friend, i believe i made it clear in one of my posts, that ofcourse we need to go through approval by microsoft

[Noone]

yep, I know that approvement is needed but I thought XNA will be fully functional for creating xbox games and you need approvement only if you want a game you made using it become a commercial product. Something like Mnemonic's (Hi!) WME - you can make a fully functional game with it but you need to pay a license fee if you wanna release it as commercial project.

[track7]

true true!