XBOX 1 Development? Dumb Decisions are costly
Well, all the views in this post are not my views and they are of industry experts. One year back I was working on a project which was supposed to be on PC and then decision was taken to develop both for XBOX and PC and I was really amazed how company took the decision of XBOX and not XBOX 360 but so called visionary grand old man of gaming industry predicted XBOX 360 a failure and was sure that people will continue to use their XBOX consoles but how in this whole world give him an idea that XBOX title had market? Still I followed and started working on the project considering everything to be on PC and XBOX.
One fine day, I got shock of my life when that grand old man of gaming industry told me that he decided to drop the PC release as the kinda game we were doing was more suited for consoles and he dropped the PC version completely. The world stopped for me that day as I really couldn't think of such a decision by someone of that cadre. I was following the industry trend and XBOX 360 was rapidly gaining market and XBOX was being removed from shelves and everybody knows how Microsoft expertises in this practice. XBOX never had a presence and whatever little it had (3.6% in 2006), Microsoft itself was trying to eradicate its own presence and replace with powerhouse XBOX 360. PC version was the only excuse for me to continue working on that project and that excuse was not there so I decided to move ahead in my life with more meaning ful things. I don't follow instructions blindly, I have my opinions and I ask questions but when those big daddies think that our suggestions and questions don't matter then time is right to walk out. I did that and I'm happy.
Recently I found a relevant link on gamedev (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=433541&whichpage=1�) which also talks about the XBOX future. These industry experts are right and let me summarize what they are trying to convey:
1. Do yourself a favor and look into XNA. I can't really see an Xbox 1 game selling very well, as well as XNA could potentially speed up your development time. If you could get your hands on a Dev Kit (at little or no expense) it might be worth it just to see what a Dev Kit is actually like.
2. The Xbox 1 is already as good as dead. Publishers aren't interested and some retailers are already clearing them out of their stores and selling off final stock.
3. The point is that you can't make commercial games on Xbox 1. By that I mean that you may be able to make a game but there won't be any way to make it commercial because Microsoft and all the publishers are giving up on it. The Xbox 1 market is dead now. 8 months from now (22nd Jan 2007) it will smell really bad.
4. The latest issue of the UK trade paper has some numbers for software sales per format by value....In 2005 the Xbox 1 had 11.6% of the market, In 2006 it was down to 3.8% and In 2007....?
5. Regarding usage of emulator to run XBOX game on XBOX 360, A publisher will only consider those if they are their own back-catalogue games. They won't want to sell an Xb1 game + emu to Xb360 users. There is no point when there are already more than enough 360 games available.
6. Publishers are stupid (very). If you are trying to sell a 360 game they want to see it on 360. Maybe less so once you are an established developer but essential if you are trying to break in.
7. Eight months from now most publishers won't have an Xbox dev system or console on which to view demos. The ones they have will have been tossed in the basement and they won't be able to find the controller/PSU.
8. If you ignore point 6 and go ahead with a proof of concept on a different machine then the only worthwhile machine would be PC as you can at least bring that game to completion and sell it yourself over the net.
9. The fact that someone already has the xbox is a problem not an advantage. He has invested time and money into learning it and thus doesn't want to waste it. However, going ahead and developing on that platform is a dead-end and as such is an even bigger waste of time and money. Time to drop it and move on.
Well, I think someone should be sensible enough to check the market trends also and going by personal instinct is really lethal for the comapany's reputation and people (at least I) will suspect the credibility of those big daddies and specially when the entire development cost has been paid up by someone else who is successful in all sort of business and thought of getting into gaming bcoz it yields huge returns and that's why he could afford to hire those big daddies but some months down the line, he'd realize that there's huge amount of difference between a marketing guy and a CEO. CEO is a visionary and marketing guys sell that vision but if you ask marketing guy to control the company, he doesn't have a vision and there's a dead end again........... I'll soon post the fate of that project.
One fine day, I got shock of my life when that grand old man of gaming industry told me that he decided to drop the PC release as the kinda game we were doing was more suited for consoles and he dropped the PC version completely. The world stopped for me that day as I really couldn't think of such a decision by someone of that cadre. I was following the industry trend and XBOX 360 was rapidly gaining market and XBOX was being removed from shelves and everybody knows how Microsoft expertises in this practice. XBOX never had a presence and whatever little it had (3.6% in 2006), Microsoft itself was trying to eradicate its own presence and replace with powerhouse XBOX 360. PC version was the only excuse for me to continue working on that project and that excuse was not there so I decided to move ahead in my life with more meaning ful things. I don't follow instructions blindly, I have my opinions and I ask questions but when those big daddies think that our suggestions and questions don't matter then time is right to walk out. I did that and I'm happy.
Recently I found a relevant link on gamedev (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=433541&whichpage=1�) which also talks about the XBOX future. These industry experts are right and let me summarize what they are trying to convey:
1. Do yourself a favor and look into XNA. I can't really see an Xbox 1 game selling very well, as well as XNA could potentially speed up your development time. If you could get your hands on a Dev Kit (at little or no expense) it might be worth it just to see what a Dev Kit is actually like.
2. The Xbox 1 is already as good as dead. Publishers aren't interested and some retailers are already clearing them out of their stores and selling off final stock.
3. The point is that you can't make commercial games on Xbox 1. By that I mean that you may be able to make a game but there won't be any way to make it commercial because Microsoft and all the publishers are giving up on it. The Xbox 1 market is dead now. 8 months from now (22nd Jan 2007) it will smell really bad.
4. The latest issue of the UK trade paper has some numbers for software sales per format by value....In 2005 the Xbox 1 had 11.6% of the market, In 2006 it was down to 3.8% and In 2007....?
5. Regarding usage of emulator to run XBOX game on XBOX 360, A publisher will only consider those if they are their own back-catalogue games. They won't want to sell an Xb1 game + emu to Xb360 users. There is no point when there are already more than enough 360 games available.
6. Publishers are stupid (very). If you are trying to sell a 360 game they want to see it on 360. Maybe less so once you are an established developer but essential if you are trying to break in.
7. Eight months from now most publishers won't have an Xbox dev system or console on which to view demos. The ones they have will have been tossed in the basement and they won't be able to find the controller/PSU.
8. If you ignore point 6 and go ahead with a proof of concept on a different machine then the only worthwhile machine would be PC as you can at least bring that game to completion and sell it yourself over the net.
9. The fact that someone already has the xbox is a problem not an advantage. He has invested time and money into learning it and thus doesn't want to waste it. However, going ahead and developing on that platform is a dead-end and as such is an even bigger waste of time and money. Time to drop it and move on.
Well, I think someone should be sensible enough to check the market trends also and going by personal instinct is really lethal for the comapany's reputation and people (at least I) will suspect the credibility of those big daddies and specially when the entire development cost has been paid up by someone else who is successful in all sort of business and thought of getting into gaming bcoz it yields huge returns and that's why he could afford to hire those big daddies but some months down the line, he'd realize that there's huge amount of difference between a marketing guy and a CEO. CEO is a visionary and marketing guys sell that vision but if you ask marketing guy to control the company, he doesn't have a vision and there's a dead end again........... I'll soon post the fate of that project.
posted by Rajat at
9:15 PM
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