[Josh Klint]

YouGroove, on 02 February 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

The more simple is XboxLive games: Xna games.
You can find a lot made by indies, lots of simples, bad , and some really good !
Perhaps the best solution would be to go for Xna instead of Xbox ?

This is not possible, because XNA allows C# code only.  Same problem with Windows phone.

[dennis]

porting to Xbox seems interesting, but I'd prefer seeing my game on Sony's computer entertainment instead of microsoft's Xbox. just because PS looks way more sexy! and the games are just much more shooter type like. also the hardware performance for PS is way better than Xbox (games could be way heavier) so development would be more easy

[LordHippo]

dennis, on 09 February 2012 - 01:21 PM, said:

also the hardware performance for PS is way better than Xbox

It's completely opposite.

[dennis]

LordHippo, on 09 February 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:

It's completely opposite.

agreed. But still both will definitely will be the most awesome agreed or not?

[Josh Klint]

dennis, on 09 February 2012 - 01:21 PM, said:

porting to Xbox seems interesting, but I'd prefer seeing my game on Sony's computer entertainment instead of microsoft's Xbox. just because PS looks way more sexy! and the games are just much more shooter type like. also the hardware performance for PS is way better than Xbox (games could be way heavier) so development would be more easy

Both MS and the PS3 have a stupidly closed system, and are getting crushed by Apple because of it.  Console sales are down something like 30% year over year, while mobile is rising.

[tournamentdan]

Josh Klint, on 09 February 2012 - 06:19 PM, said:

Both MS and the PS3 have a stupidly closed system, and are getting crushed by Apple because of it.  Console sales are down something like 30% year over year, while mobile is rising.

This statement is a little loaded and I will tell you why.  In a bad economy people feel they need a phone more than they need a gaming device. Also people update their phone every year or two. The playstaion3 has been out for a while and for the most part who ever is going to buy one already has one. Same for the xbox.You made a comment on a separate thread that shows proof that consoles will never die and be more popular than pc games. I think you said something like the majority of people in the world are computer illiterate, and that is why you are making certain features so you can have a larger target audience for your software. Regular people just want to buy a game and have it work. They do not want to know or worry about if their video card is good enough. They just want to plug and play.If you want to go by sales, I am sure you will find that games for consoles out sale everything else put together.

[Admin]

-Mobile game sales in 2010 increased 46% from the previous year.
-Games through social websites increased 66%.
-At the same time, console game sales decreased 29%.



This is good for you.  The days of the monolithic AAA studio making games for inferior hardware are coming to an end.  They had a profitable run, but the party's over.  The shift from consoles to mobile mirrors the switch from PC to consoles exactly.

http://www.megagames...e-consoles-soon
http://www.vgchartz....across-the-boar
http://www.dailyfina...t-sure-whats-up
http://venturebeat.c...orst-since-2006

[Rick]

As a gammer I'm sad at this because pretty much every mobile game (phones and tabs) I've ever seen is not that good :/ Poor input devices which limit things being the reason I can see.

As a game programmer I'm happy beacuse it helps level the playing field

[tournamentdan]

Yes maybe total units have gone down for a console, but for good games money sales have gone up. According to xbox magazine modern warfare3 grossed 775 million dollars in the first five days. I think one of the problems is crap games. The other is a sore economy. People may not be able to afford a 60 or 70 dollar game, but they can sure afford 2.99 for a app that makes fart noises.
In the third link that you posted it shows sales for that month at 1.53 billion. I do not know about you but I would not mind tapping into that market. I am not saying any game that I make will ever make 775 million or 775 hundred, but I would like to at least have the ability.
The whole reason that you are creating a new engine is so you can increase your consumer market, right? So why put a cap on ours?

[Josh Klint]

The winners on consoles are already established.  No newcomers will succeed.  Anything that's not Call of Duty 7, etc. will fail.  That's when companies move on to a new platform that isn't dominated by just a few big winners.  This bodes very well for indies because you are not artificially blocked out of the mobile market.  Conditions could not be better than they will be over the next couple years.

[tournamentdan]

I guess it is true if you say so. Unfortunately this is a make or break feature for me.  I have a blackberry. They are not as popular as a Iphone or droid so I am sure they have more apps and games than blackberry. As I look in the official blackberry app store there are over 24,000 apps and over 1,700 games. I wonder if there are games that get lost and never make it in the sea of mobile games already out there?

[Josh Klint]

tournamentdan, on 10 February 2012 - 03:15 PM, said:

I guess it is true if you say so. Unfortunately this is a make or break feature for me.  I have a blackberry. They are not as popular as a Iphone or droid so I am sure they have more apps and games than blackberry. As I look in the official blackberry app store there are over 24,000 apps and over 1,700 games. I wonder if there are games that get lost and never make it in the sea of mobile games already out there?

XBox support is a make or break feature for you?  Do you have a development license?  I fully intend to support the consoles ASAP because it can be sold to professional studios, but MS is locking you out of that platform.

[Rick]

XBox supports XNA which is basically created for Indies to get their games on XBox. You don't need a big time development license like with PS3. This is one of the best moves MS has made. Sadly they don't allow C++ just .NET.

http://blogs.msdn.co...nity-games.aspx

[Josh Klint]

Rick, on 11 February 2012 - 03:40 AM, said:

XBox supports XNA which is basically created for Indies to get their games on XBox. You don't need a big time development license like with PS3. This is one of the best moves MS has made. Sadly they don't allow C++ just .NET.

http://blogs.msdn.co...nity-games.aspx

Yep.

[Rick]

It's a market and a rather sizable market so you can see why some people would want support for it. The fact that it's so friendly for indie's to get their title on the XBox and since LE is sort of an indie engine, it would only make sense to support it if you could find a way.

[Brent Taylor]

Rick, on 11 February 2012 - 03:54 AM, said:

It's a market and a rather sizable market so you can see why some people would want support for it. The fact that it's so friendly for indie's to get their title on the XBox and since LE is sort of an indie engine, it would only make sense to support it if you could find a way.

Except that MSFT has now largely hidden the Indie Games section on the dashboard.  It's still there, but very few are just going to run across it.

Now that said, what with Win8 having an App store along with Windows Phone 7 (WP7)...and MSFT consolidating their Metro UI across all their devices, I get the feeling this is going to change "soon".  I expect we'll have one large store front accessible from any of MSFT's platforms.  Considering the amount of money Apple is pulling in indie and AAA app purchases on their store's, MSFT would be foolish to do otherwise in the long term.

EDIT:
@Josh, I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion of Consoles losing popularity to mobile devices.  I don't disagree that mobile device usage is on the rise, I just don't necessarily think it's mobile device usage that is causing the decline in console and console game sales.  Correlation != Causation.  I'd very much like to see the same data on the previous generation consoles at the tail end of their life cycle as well before I'd make that conclusion.

[Pixel Perfect]

Brent Taylor, on 11 February 2012 - 07:14 AM, said:

Correlation != Causation.  I'd very much like to see the same data on the previous generation consoles at the tail end of their life cycle as well before I'd make that conclusion.

That mirrors my view point on this too, it's fun to draw the type of conclusions being drawn in this thread but I wouldn't put too much credence in them.  If we could all throw a few stats onto a graph and draw meaningful and accurate predictions for the future we'd all be rich.

[Josh Klint]

Remember that your personal tastes have nothing to do with the market as a whole.  If the market reflected my preferences, every game after STALKER would have been rejected.

http://www.tuaw.com/...orm-is-the-ipad

Quote

Consoles used to be 80% of the industry as recently as 2000. Consoles today are 40% of the game industry, so what do we really have? We have a new hardware platform and we're putting out software every 90 days. Our fastest growing platform is the iPad right now and that didn't exist 18 months ago. -John Riccitiello, CEO of EA

It's already been decided.  This guy knows a lot more about the industry than he will say in an interview.

[Brent Taylor]

Josh Klint, on 11 February 2012 - 05:03 PM, said:

Remember that your personal tastes have nothing to do with the market as a whole.  If the market reflected my preferences, every game after STALKER would have been rejected.

http://www.tuaw.com/...orm-is-the-ipad



It's already been decided.  This guy knows a lot more about the industry than he will say in an interview.

I don't have any real personal preference on this.  I simply want to see the corresponding data for the previous console generation before linking cause with correlation.  I certainly do not disagree that mobile gaming is on the rise (and by leaps and bounds).  I'm just not positive that it's also driving down console sales.  I'm curious if the current data also mirrors the tail end of the last console generation life cycle.

[Paul Thomas]

I just kept going past this thread, not replying, because it involves studying the subject in-depth before actually knowing what's all going on to have a real informed opinion. However, has anyone here played a game on a Droid X or similar device? It's stupid. The most awkward way of playing a game ever. I see this 'high rise' in mobile game sales all due to being the latest tech fad. It's still new so people are going to go crazy over it. What were the sales like for PSP when it came out? Nintendo DS?

Taking a look at that chart, those are sales amounts, not profit amounts correct? I've looked around randomly at mobile games for sale, it seems the average price for a mobile game is, what, $2.00? 1.2 million sales of mobile games pulling in 2.4 million in profit but 1.2 million sales of console games pulling in 50.2 million. Not really a margin I would care about. The only part I would care about is making a game, even a dumb game, would be fun to make for a mobile device. Really only because it's new.

Also, I can believe mobile game sales are increasing faster than console games, why? Not only because it's new, but people are lazy. It takes only a couple of minutes and $2.00 to buy a game on the mobile market but it actually takes effort to go to your local store and purchase a console game. That or order it online and wait a few days. If you break the laziness you get the dollar. And in the case of mobile games, only a couple dollars per sale.

Overall, if you want the longest reach possible, you build for all platforms, but that takes a lot of work. Sure, you can compile code for all platforms usually with a bit of a different setup and engines have made that possible with different button clicks. However, the art side is much more difficult than that. You cannot use the same quality meshes that are standard for console/PC for mobile. Therefore, a game directly designed specifically for a PC, or console, most likely won't work the same for mobile; you might as well pick one or the other.

I personally would like to see LE3 on all platforms in the future but support PC/console over mobile.