Microsoft will allow self-publishing on the Xbox One – Every Xbox One will be a development unit. “Our vision is that every person can be a creator. That every Xbox One can be used for development. That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE. We’ll have more details on the program and the timeline at gamescom in August.” No matter how much Microsoft screwed up the initial PR around the new Xbox, this is just awesome news.
If they have to make every unit a dev unit, then there really must be a lack of interest in the platform by normal game publishers, so they’re just that desperate to get developers to make games. Sad really; but probably shows where the platform is heading…to the toilet.
That’s a ridiculous statement.
Microsoft derangement syndrome.
Especially since you’ll be pigeonholed into only the Xbox and Windows, not a great position to be in if you are making a console game.
I doubt all those studios selling XBox 360 or Windows games had any problem with that.
To me this move by Microsoft is just a desperate action trying to save sinking Titanic.
It seems to be an mush more open approach. If being open is desperate, then desperation is a good thing which we (consumers and developers) need much more of
bring on the desperation!!!
Sony had been seeming to be getting the solid indy cred, and this is a strong response to that. Doesn’t necessarily change anything, but I can’t knock this move.
I’m less impressed by MS’ recent PR doublespeak about selling out it’s preorders, conspicuously avoiding numbers or reasons why the preorders were limited, or how their numbers may have changed from the original plan (considering that MS’ own ‘positive news’ about ‘newly discovered ESRAM bandwidth’ inadvertently revealed a 50mhz downclock, consistent with production problems which would impact shippable units).
If anybody can activate their console as a developer unit, wouldn’t this enable an alternate distribution network? You just sign up as a developer, now you can download games from non-Microsoft repositories and install them to play on your machine? I guess Microsoft could cut any developer out of the official Xbox store if they were also selling outside the offical store…?
Very likely you will have to “self publish” to their network only.
Sony is very open with indie developers, and the requirements to get devkits are very low.
The devkits also gradually resemble production devices more and more.
Microsoft had a shitbag attidue towards smallers studios for a decade, so i’m very glad they are going this way.
I’m sure this won’t equate to “write some compatible code and it’ll run”, I bet it will come out to “pay us for the SDK and a signing key, and we graciously won’t force you to buy a super-powered version of the same console”.
Funny how quickly one can acquire a vision that’s exactly the opposite to the one you had just a short time ago.
There is a pathological name for fast and random vision changing in your head, what’s it is called again ?
The best part, “Our vision…” : mais bien sûr, et la marmotte…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qg3Rk-B09o
Kochise
But they’ve made it clear they’re deprecating XNA (one of the best damn tools for indie game developers ever). What kind of platform will we have access to?
I’m guessing it’ll be similar to the Windows 8 API. Maybe it’ll flat-out run Windows 8 apps? Have access to the same store?
XNA was a victim of the usual native vs managed politic groups inside Microsoft.
At BUILD 2013, Unity was presented as XNA successor.
XNA was pretty disliked, until MSFT depreciated it of course.
Just like MSFT does with almost every API they produce.
Most of the new APIs are either incredibly similar to old ones or they are an improvement.
Also the old APIs tend to live forever anyway. I still regularly work on .NET 1.1 code.
Edited 2013-07-25 10:00 UTC
Yeah, not like he cares anyway. Its disingenuous bullshit to get a pot shot at MSFT.
Non developers commenting on dev topics and pretending they know what they’re saying is cute.
Are you talking about yourself, Nelson? You certainly qualifies as an armchair console game developer in this thread.
No.
Just trolling Nelson. I wasn’t trying to make a serious debate about APIs.
You’re never up for a serious debate because you never make a serious or insightful point.
Its a cop out to back off and say “oh I was just trolling” when the alternative is the admission that you’re a moron and don’t know what you’re talking about.
Well then you are acting like a cock.
Look there are enough idiots on this site that hate Microsoft for completely ridiculous reasons.
I don’t agree with everything Nelson says, his opinion and my opinion on Web Apps is totally different. But he knows his shit about Microsoft Tech and So do I … because it is my job.
Actually,
You are my hero for today for saying that!
Was it disliked? I know the publishing process isn’t/wasn’t great, but I really like everything else about it. C# lends itself well to game development: somewhere between Java and C++ and more really nice features neither of the other two have. And XNA provided a common base for 3rd-party game dev libraries. For example, in C++, every graphics library, physics library, etc., has its own vector types, but most libraries like that I’ve encountered for C# just use XNA’s vector types.
If the rumors are true, PlayStation Mobile (the indie dev platform for PlayStation Vita and PlayStation-certified phones) will be available on the PS4. And since MonoGame (an open-source implementation of XNA) supports PlayStation Mobile, XNA might ironically become the platform of choice for indie PlayStation 4 developers. The PC version of Transistor, for example, is written in C#/MonoGame, and it was the poster-child for PS4 indie games at E3.
MonoGame has Windows 8 support too, so if the Xbox One indie dev platform is based on Windows 8, XNA might live on in Xbox One indie development.
The Content Pipeline was a mess, Effects were a mess for a long time, it was stuck with DX9 for its entire life, used a bastardized version of VS, was,extremely limited on the 360 especially networking. And the entire networking match making stack was a pile of garbage. That’s before XLIG or the haphhazard creators club submission process.
XNA is nice because no better alternative exists, but its far from ideal or forward facing. The problem I see hamstringing MonoGame (and it is a great effort) is maintaining API compatibility with a defunct platform is a brain dead choice.
MonoGame succeeds because there is a void, that’s it. I do think Microsoft needs a competent managed API for games though and hopefully they’re working on one.
I hope they improve the not so stellar performance their compiler current has, just by browsing the workarounds listed at their forums.
Based on all the policy changes, back peddling, etc that’s been going on with the xbone I think it wise to take a wait and see stance with this console. Who knows what the xbone policies will be at release, or even next week for that matter. What a confusing mess.
The correct policy is, don’t trust them and skip the console.
If only he knew how uncool that sounds.
First people cry about how the Xbox is a closed system for indie developers. So they open it up and what do people do when they get what they want? They still cry, claiming it’s just a move out of desperation. People can be such idiots, I swear. If Microsoft jumped off a cliff, the Microsoft haters would still find something to piss their panties about. Undoubtedly some really stupid shit like they didn’t jump off the cliff correctly.
Just stop already….
It seems that Indie developers will not be able to access the full range of features for development:
http://analogaddiction.org/2013/07/25/strings-attached-to-xbox-one-…