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MS To Indie Devs: You Have a To Have a Publisher
Loadmaster writes "The new Oddworld game New 'n' Tasty is coming to every platform in the current generation and even the next generation but not the Xbox One. It's not that developer Oddworld Inhabitants isn't porting the game. It's not that they hate Microsoft or the Xbox One. No, it's that Microsoft has taken an anti-indie dev stance with the Xbox One. While the game industry is moving to Kickstarter and self-funded shops, Microsoft has decided all developers must have a publisher to grace their console."
Microsoft is a sinking ship, there is no salvage.
This is just Microsoft protecting their own turf. This is part of their culture. As a publisher they feel they must prevent anything that might jeopardize that income. Most companies would not go this far, but Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."
One of the main issue with "consoles" is that it really is controled by a bunch of sociopath focusing on how to put the maximum of toll boths to efficiently bleed the marcs..
Under the pretext of make the experience "safe", you need the get some sort of "authorisations" from the console makers, and now it seems that Microsoft feels strong (or is weak) enough to add an additional hurdle to avoid "wasting their time" with the unwashed masses.
I hope that "android" consoles become popular (and that it will not end up with Google doing exactly the same thing M$ is doing ....
Might as well be a total asshole.
"Developers creating work-for-hire for official publishing channels! Developers creating work-for-hire for official publishing channels! Developers creating work-for-hire for official publishing channels!"
I am not a crackpot.
So what are the criteria for game developer to become a publisher?
Why do dev companies even need publishers? Serious question, what do publishers bring to the table?
What about Minecraft then? Mojang surely is self-publishing that. I suppose it's just a case of MS not being THAT dumb to reject Minecraft...
DeVelOpERs! deveLOpErS! dEVLopeRS! deVelo....
Oh sorry, not for you guys.
--
BMO
XBoxOne fails miserably as a result of MS's arrogance and stupidity
If this were Reddit, I'd be asking for AWildSketchAppears to draw a plane crashing and burning into a train wreck because the pilot shot out the tires while simultaneously trying to insert his head up his own ass.
This seriously cannot get any worse. Can it?
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Ah, now THAT'S the Microsoft we all know and love! Glad to see it's the mid-90s to the early 2000s again, because now I don't feel so old!
That must've been it: Someone at an XBone design meeting must've heard that Judge Jackson was dying, so they went crazy with celebrations and decided to design their next console entirely around bragging about this fact. Let's see how this classic attitude of theirs survives in the 2010s!
Headline is well written once more. Why even bother to the read the article.
Microsoft has a culture of "cutting off their nose to spite their face."
No they don't they are simply the same bullying Abusive Monopoly they always are. There technique is abusive compromise...with the users doing all the compromising. They start with being over-reaching...and then step back ( a little) when users revolt, and repeat at the next iteration. IT has been incredibly successful at slowly eroding users rites.
Indie publishers got the short end of the stick on the 360 this is simply a continuation of that. my personal favourite http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/07/20/1540247/microsoft-taking-heat-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee the patch fee :)
They been making so many bad moves in the last few years, I'm beginning to think this is some elaborate game to intentionally run the company off a cliff. Surely to god, they can't be doing all this dumb shit and actually thinking it's smart. Can they?
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
It's-a me-a Mario!
No but this article says the Indie section is going away:
Yesterday, Microsoft's Studios corporate vice president Phil Harrison told Eurogamer that the marketplace on the company's new Xbox One console would combine retail games, Xbox Live Arcade, and Xbox Live Indie Games into a single section. . . With the Indie Games section going away, that means developers are stuck with the standard Xbox publishing rules.
So yes, indie games will need a publisher which sorta not makes them indie anymore. This might be a misunderstanding but Oddworld seems to think they are being forced to use a publisher. MS might have to clarify this point. There is a need for a publisher in games mostly for funding; however, Oddworld is self-funded. They don't feel like sharing revenue and profits when they don't have to share.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Ridiculed by Sony's PS4 at E3, embarrassing reviews, poor hardware, mandatory kinect (read: PRISM) and users pissed off because of restrictive used games' policy and a not well defined mandatory online check every 24 hours.
Xbox One already belongs to the trash can of videogames' history, only a retard would buy it.
I really, really don't understand what the people at Microsoft are thinking. Ever. They go about things in two ways - they either start off with a terrible product and keep it that way, or they start off with something decent (Windows 95, Xbox [original]), make it better (XP, 360), and then shoot themselves in the ass (ME/Vista/8, Xbox One).
It stinks too, I enjoy my 360 and, even with the Gold membership fees, I'm pretty sure I'm still under the cost of a PS3, however the PS4 or Wii U are my ONLY options in this next round of console purchasing. I'll be happy to let my 360 gather dust and not worry about all the crap M$ is trying to shove down our throats. The Microsoft cocktail:
- 2 oz gin
- lime zest
- fill to top with tonic water
- put in blender with 1 lb human fecal matter
- pulse until smooth
- pour on your customer base
- ???
- profit (and imbibe! delicious)
MS used to have XNA, and basically let anyone publish on the 360 with just a $100 a year license. Not sure why they abandoned such a forward-thinking program. But it does fit in with the general MS stance of making every fucking wrong move imaginable over the last 3-4 years, and scrapping every decent idea they ever had.
Sometimes I think Blamer has secretly gone nuts, and no one has the balls to have him committed. It would certainly explain why he's absent from MS public events these days. But at least Howard Hughes was smart enough to delegate well after *he* went batshit. Balmer, by contrast, seems determined to not only collect all his urine in jars, but also to run his company off the cliff.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Why is that a misunderstanding?
They are being forced to get a publisher and as such will not be Indie. This means the XBone will not have any Indie games. Indie means independent, which MS seems to not allow on the new console.
m$ have signalled what is unfortunately the end of gaming & our rights, if sony dont implement this along the way, "forced by the nasty publishers" it will be implemented in the next offerings.
vote with your money people, don't pay for the destruction of your rights
the next anti consumer move will be, charging for hmmm, netflix, lets say, rentals that charge per person sitting in the room & calculated by always on connect..!
also does the nsa have back-doors into the xbox, the same as windows 0day exploits handed to them by m$?
The Truth Is Out There:
Forget Xbox, the iOS consoles are already massively popular.
I original poster was making the point that their are a few Android consoles about, as an alternative...I believe Mad Catz (yes that one) is about to add to the already popular Android console market.
iOS does not have a gaming console, as Steve Jobs was pretty anti-games. There was a rumour about them buying Nintendo which I suspect would have been an incredible match. Instead they spent their time making criminal deals with book publishers.
I do think it would be a great move to turn AppleTV boxes into mini consoles even is it is only using the iPhone as a gamepad, but they are more interested in taking about bullshit design...rather than real innovation.
and the same BS was done with windows app = antitrust.
Except that indie games can publish on the Wii U and PS4 without a publisher.
So no, that's just how it is in Microsoftland. Unless you're making a game for the Windows Store, which also doesn't need a publisher.
Or if you're Minecraft, which doesn't need a publisher because Microsoft threw their own rules out the window to get it.
That's one great set of rules MS has, where they're so good they keep getting rid of them.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Brian Provinciano held a great presentation at GDC2013 about writing and releasing Retro City Rampage. Required watching/reading. One Man, 17 SKUs: Shipping on Every Platform at Once. He does not have many good things to say about working with MS on the XBox Live version.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
... is self-destruction. Microsoft, Erdogan, Mursi -- delusions of grandeur have a remarkably similar outcome across all "platforms".
Did XNA include the rights to publish patches?
My understanding was they charged far out the ass for that and it lead to many games staying broken since not even big companies wanted to pay to fix already sold games.
Remove money from wallet, then throw directly at Sony...
"If God can do it for 10% why can't the US Government?"
I'm giving MS the benefit of a doubt. They may not have all the details right and is still working them out. Their messaging also has not been very good lately so one group might be saying one thing and another group saying another.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The article tells you Oddworld:New and Tasty needs an official publisher to release on XBox, it tells you that Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning doesn't want to get a publisher, and it tells you why he doesn't want to get a publisher (he doesn't want to split the revenue), but it doesn't tell you Oddworld Interactive doesn't count as a publisher.
They clearly don't meet some requirement. Is the requirement stupid and obsolete (ie: the ability to ship boxed games), or is it reasonable (ie: the ability to correctly charge sales tax/VAT)? If it's not reasonable is it trivial?
They are being forced to get a publisher and as such will not be Indie. This means the XBone will not have any Indie games. Indie means independent, which MS seems to not allow on the new console.
Can someone explain the definition of a "publisher?" Why can't Oddworld Inhabitants simply state that they ARE a publisher or create Oddworld Publishing as a separate, wholly-owned company? The latter might be a little bit of a paperwork drill but incorporation really isn't that difficult. Is there a list of certified publishers that MS uses or something?
Their messaging?
Can't at least slashdot being a safe haven from this marketing bullshit?
I don't care about how they fucking say it, just what they say. What they are saying is the issue, not how.
Marking folks, please follow Bill Hicks advise. I will even buy you the bullet.
Set up a company called AAA Publishing. Problem solved. "You want a publisher? Fine. Here's our publisher. It's a freak coincidence that the president and CEO of our publishing company share the names of the president and CEO of our development company. Small world, I guess."
Sony also made new PS3 disc games require Other OS-incompatible firmware, which defeated the purpose of Other OS which was to have Linux and games on one device. If people knew that they'd have to keep one PS3 for Other OS and buy a second PS3 for playing new games, they would have bought a PC instead in the first place.
Toward this, see the entry for "Getting Crap Past the Radar" in TV Tropes' article about Battle Chess .
Just like when the Japanese isolated themselves from foreign powers so too does Microsoft follow. However, unlike the physical guns back then, they will be dealing with metaphorical ones and they are asking for suicide. They're not going to fall or collapse. No, they are going to blow up and take as many people with them as possible. The industry's death looms ever near, Microsoft is just going to make it spectacular.
Damn. With the 24-hour constant activation and this, it seems like MS is machine gunning itself in the foot with the XBox One. Who do they expect to buy this thing? Are they trying to sink their gaming unit?
This is just a move to raise the barrier to entry to make sure the Xbone doesn't get another minecraft.
Oh I get it. It's Blizzard's fault. If Microsoft didn't institute a policy of requiring an established publisher, Blizzard would argue that Microsoft was implicit in allowing Mojang to weaken the distinctiveness of the Warcraft and StarCraft trademarks, just as Idthesda has accused Mojang of doing to The Elder Scrolls. Blizzard has so much clout because its parent company makes Call of Duty series, which is probably single-handedly responsible for millions of Xbox Live Gold subscriptions.
At this point, the question is not whether Steve Ballmer should be fired as Microsoft CEO, but whether it's time to actually commit him to a mental institution.
This change could be as intended, but MS these days is bumbling badly these days on many fronts. They won't be the first company to change or clarify something after initial reactions.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Sure, but that is the same thing. They could make more money if they were simply not so dickish.
They are being dickish to make *more* money. It only fails to work in places they are not an established monopoly, otherwise users have to eat shit.
See link below. Also, Microsoft pledged to have a independent creator program and is rumored to announce a new Xbox developer program at the BUILD developer conference on June 26th.
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesSilva/20130523/192832/Were_Indie_we_like_Microsoft_Too_Controversial.php
wrote this post on our blog a few months ago to express how absolutely weird and unfortunate I thought it was that the trending perception of Microsoft and indies had gotten so bad that silly creative decisions of mine were being taken as Microsoft's ever-burgeoning evilness toward indies, or something. My message was this: we're indie, we make the games we want to make, Microsoft publishes them, and the past five years of this have been great, and it's too bad that that's not super newsworthy, because this whole time it just feels like I must watch, powerless, as Lumbergh keeps taking my red stapler.
Then Xbox One happened, and a longtime fan of ours posted this on my facebook wall:
Questionable grammar aside, I was super glad he posted this, because through no fault of his own he's unwittingly illustrated what happens when these narratives blow up. You know that thing about no self-publishing on Xbox One? The meaning of that quote was that the partner/publisher relationship is currently the same (i.e. what we, an indie studio, been doing for the last five years) but they're exploring ways to improve it. Basically "everything's the same, stay tuned for improvements" mutated into "no indies on Xbox One, ever" in a few hours.
Finally, a disclaimer: I do not think there is a vast conspiracy to unjustly villify Microsoft. That would be weird, possibly an indicator of neurosis, even. I just wish I could add my "everything is fine" experience to the mix more often.
And with that, here's the original post:
In Charlie Murder, the whole band gets Windows Phones on the fictional t2f (short for ta2fön) network. There’s a bunch of stuff you can use your phone for, like email (some of it rote, some of it interesting), camera phone, and squid-themed microblogging site squ.iddl.us. I thought it was a fun way to give your characters a bit of an info hub, and I’ve been a big fan of Windows Phone ever since my Samsung Focus and its marvelous bulging battery bomb (that’s another story). Also, we have a game on Windows Phone, and we definitely make a buck or two whenever someone buys it, so that’s cool. Yet still, I felt the need to tweet this:
In the comments in Joystiq’s rad Charlie Murder preview write up, there were a few begrudging Microsoft for what was (erroneously) interpreted as some sort of paid off order from up high to include the phone in the game. This is obviously entirely untrue; if anyone’s guilty of some sort of slimy promotion, I guess that would be me, as I’d like to get more people interested in a pretty solid other alternative to iPhone (and, again, we’ve got Z0MB1ES on dat ph0ne!!!1)
But I think this illuminates an underlying issue, namely that of Microsoft’s misunderstood role as indie games publisher, and how that ties to the trending media narrative on Microsoft being “bad for indies.” Where do we stand on all this? Read on:
So, Microsoft is publishing Charlie Murder. What does that mean? Here are a few facts to set the record straight:
We have full creative control. This is our game. 100% of the (non-localized) content in Charlie Murder was made by Michelle and me, or, in a few cases, by a few gaming celebrities who we got some rad cameos from (yes, celebrities).
Ska Studios is just Michelle and me. We work in our basement. We have two cats (you knew that).
Microsoft gives us localized text from our English text, finds bugs, tells us how to fix bugs when we’re stumped, tells us how close to passing cert we are, and takes us out to din
Microsoft has been funneling everything through their marketing, so we don't have much of a choice. Due to this, What they are saying is dependent on how they are saying it.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Even at todays prices I would like to forward my offer to that entire dept. 1 bullet per Marketing person, for internal use only. Do please try to do it outside with a good backstop, we would not want any useful people hit by accident.
Microsoft was on a good path for a while. The Xbox 360, the Kinect....these were good things. Even Windows phone 8 was venturous. And as much as folks knock Windows 8 - let's give credit where credit is due, it was very daring. (And honestly, there are a number of really good improvements. And if they got some kinks worked out. Windows 9 might do well.
But lately, they just seem to be doing "stupid" again. Steve Ballmer needs to be fired. Plain and simple.
Can someone explain the definition of a "publisher?" Why can't Oddworld Inhabitants simply state that they ARE a publisher or create Oddworld Publishing as a separate, wholly-owned company? The latter might be a little bit of a paperwork drill but incorporation really isn't that difficult. Is there a list of certified publishers that MS uses or something?
I think it's more than a simple declaration. Publishers are responsible for manufacturing, marketing, advertising, etc. Indie normally don't do this because of staff size, expertise, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It seems the console is TV TV TV TV TV SPORTS COD COD COD
COD? I knew something was fishy about the Xbox One. Apparently someone in Microsoft thinks gamers are dumb Pollocks.
Gang up all the indie studios and act as their publisher.
Old Chinese saying: Make a group, and you will be stronger.
Old American saying: United We Stand.
New Economic Perspectives
No, it didn't. There seems to be some confusion in this thread. The patch publishing fee was for XBox Live Arcade or retail games.
I think the reason Microsoft has ditched indie games is that they turned it into a failure themselves.
All the really really good indie games got given full Live Arcade publishing rights by Microsoft. XNA ran on a version of the .NET CLR but Microsoft ended up creating an implementation of it that worked for Live Arcade games and a simple API that extended XNA to allow for achievements and so forth so that indie games could be ported to Live Arcade extremely trivially.
The net result was that the only thing that ended up in indie games was complete and utter shit and as such it wont have made Microsoft even close to the amount of money required to maintain it and to maintain XNA too, hence what is I suspect the whole reason XNA has been EOL'd for a while and indie games is going too on the new XBox. It wasn't helped by the fact that in one of the dashboard updates Microsoft hid indie games so far out the way in the menus few people found it.
But what's stupid is that Microsoft seem to have forgotten that even though it wasn't profitable in itself it was still the catalyst for the creation of all those games that got turned into fully fledged Live Arcade titles.
I suspect someone from finance has looked at the balance sheet and seen that indie games/XNA wasn't profitable in itself without having even the slightest understanding of how important it was for driving XBox Live Arcade revenues. Had those Live Arcade revenues from games ported from Indie games to Live Arcade been attributed to Indie rather than Live Arcade I'd wager it was profitable, just not on paper.
"You Have a To Have a Publisher"
I don't get it it...they don't even make Mario games. Why a speak all italian and stuff, eh?
Developers -
You HAVE to flip the tables on MS and every other platform. Don't even think about paying a dime to be "published" or "licensed". If your product is worth anything - the demand will be there. Make MS, Sony, ETC come to you - NOT vice-versa.
MS charging a fee to "reach" their customers is no different than Comcast trying to force Google, etc to reach Internet surfers who connect with Comcast.
YOU (developers) are the ones in demand - act like it. The only reason to play the game-maker hoop game is because your product sucks and you're just trying to ride coat-tails.
-CF
failure to capitalise proper nouns
I'd assume that if a web site's name appears in lowercase in a web site's <title> element, it's acceptable to leave it uncapitalized. Besides, I thought "Down syndrome" had a capital D and a lowercase S. Muphry?
non-gaming parents who will be giving consoles for birthdays/Christmas
I know beggars can't be choosers, but by November, kids will have read about the limitations of the Xbox One. "Mommy, can I have a PS4? It's cheaper. Or better yet, a new computer that does homework and games."
I hate you. Good bye.
-Ultimate Stickman Game Developer Infinite World Puzzler
Then why do they patch PC games so often?
The fees prevent patches from going out so games stay broken.
Maybe Microsoft still doesn't get this Internet thing. But most of the functions performed by a classical (print or physical media) publisher aren't needed for pure digital content. Put it on a web site or app store and you're done. Publishers have very little value in a world with zero distribution costs and viral marketing.
'Publishing' as a gatekeeper for media distribution is also the last holdout of market manipulators and organized crime. Is this what Microsoft wants?
Have gnu, will travel.
Normally I'd say, "Follow the money", but in this case, just ask yourself who benefits from all of this.
Entrenched publishers benefit from the destruction of the used games market.
Entrenched publishers benefit from phoning home regularly to confirm the license's legitimacy.
Entrenched publishers benefit from limiting your ability to share games with friends.
And entrenched publishers benefit from eliminating their competition's presence on the platform.
I'm not sure what Microsoft is getting out of this in exchange, since clearly Sony was able to keep things as they were. My best guess is that they caved under pressure from the publishers and fear that Sony would make this deal and thus secure the better exclusives. Maybe Microsoft did manage to secure some major exclusives from the major publishers that they think will make all of this bad PR fade away over time, but if they did, we haven't seen evidence of it yet. The only third-party published exclusives that have been announced so far are a new Plants vs. Zombies and Titanfall, both from EA. Literally every single other exclusive that's been announced for the One (e.g. Ryse, Dead Rising 3, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive, the new Halo, etc.) is being published by Microsoft Studios.
In contrast, Sony has already announced exclusives from Atlus, Blizzard, Capcom, Digital Extremes, Square-Enix, and also has a handful of indies with a proven track record on board (e.g. Jonathan Blow of Braid fame is making The Witness, Supergiant Games of Bastion fame are making Transistor, and the Octodad devs are bringing a new Octodad to the PS4).
I had heard of it but hadn't tried doing anything with it. Does Monogame switch to OpenGL for rendering on other platforms? I did quite like the XNA APIs they were quite pleasing to use (especially compared to plain old DirectX and OpenGL!) providing you weren't doing something that encroached upon it's limitations.
Maybe I'll give it a go but I'm tending more towards OpenGL now given that with an OpenGL engine you can target Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, PS3, PS4, Android, iOS. The XBox 360 being the only platform it doesn't target, and the XBox One not supporting it kind of leaves the question as to why bother with Direct3D now.
The issue is that Microsoft established a lot of good faith based on the 360 and some people just refuse to believe bad news when they hear it until they get to use a new product that will be handicapped. But after several days of the whole news I actually feel they will get away with it because they are promoting stuff like sharing your digital library in a household. It's kind of the same deal how Steam was able to infect us with DRM and having to run their software every time you want to run your games by making special deals with publishers and devs to have some games cheaper.
In the end, business models change but to be honest I do not know how these console manufacturers expect to sell as many consoles as they think they can in a weak economy. Nowadays you can get an AMD A10 budget gaming PC for like $270 and you get to do a lot more stuff with it too. Plus you have all these previous generation consoles that are really good, from the PS3 to the 360 and even the Wii (which is dirt cheap now), that people have way too much entertainment in their hands.
But still.. the new Xbox will sell just fine and will do just fine because it's flowing in the mainstream..
Microsoft has created some decent products lately like Windows Phone, Bing and even the Hotmail revamp comes to mind. Just the fact Apple copied their "flat" graphic style now speaks volumes of what they have accomplished in the mobile arena. Sure they have issues and the XBox One launch is a disaster but they are a big company that can tolerate some bad iterations of overall successful products, like Windows.
You might want to look up your terms. MS is not anywhere near a monopoly on consoles. They have about a 30% market share, same as Sony. Nintendo has about a 40% share. This is for consoles, MS has no handheld.
So sorry, but you can't whine about monopoly here, because MS hasn't got one. They are only one player of three, and not the big one. That is not to say this is a smart move (it isn't) but this isn't some case of a big monopoly throwing their weight around. You aren't a monopoly unless you have total or near total control over a market and they don't.
More likely, this is MS trying to make publishers happy to get more exclusive games. The traditional publishers are extremely whiny about many of the things that the new Xbox is supposed to deal with, like reselling games, indy titles, DRM, and so on. The publishers probably told them all the things they wanted, and MS said "Sure!" That looks like it is going to bit them in the ass big time, but we'll see. Maybe MS ends up getting a lot of exclusives and gamers decide they want those, forget their anger, and buy it anyhow.
Either way, knock of the monopoly whining. A monopoly isn't a large company you don't like, it has a specific legal definition.
Jobs wasn't anti-games. You seem to have forgotten that speech where he was introducing some action games to OSX by way of Activision among others. Hell, the guy started his computing career in Atari by programming games.
If Seve Jobs wasn't anti-games(he was they weren't premium)...Steve Jobs was simply a failure at the gaming market. Apple is a barren wasteland when it comes to gaming...OpenGL was left to rot, and even with a massive hole in the PC gaming market with Microsoft pretty much shitting on PC gaming since the launch of the initial XBox, Apple has become increasingly more desperate to compete...thank god for Microsoft pushing stream onto Linux and Apple.
Tell me right now what apple is doing in the gaming market, how they are moving and shaking...Android has 6+ consoles...Apple nothing. What game exclusives are coming to Apple....None. What great gaming announcements were there at the Dev conference...I think they tweaked Game centre (did anyone notice). right now 2 consoles are about to launch...both aimed at controlling the TV something Apple have talked about forever...what is Apple doing with there poular and existing product with games...Nothing.
Atari Closed Down. Apple is simply not a gaming platform. I personally think its a (many) missed opportunity. You can lie that Apple is a gaming platform...I bought an OUYA runs Android comes with a game controller.
So my guess is the reason they did all this stupid shit is publishers. The game publishers are extremely whiny, and extremely dumb, when it comes to the idea of consumer rights. They seem to think that extreme DRM is needed to prevent piracy (not that it has ever worked) and that they'd have way more sales if only they could do that. So there's the "Check in once a day thing." They also HATE the used game market, they really, honestly, act like it is money taken right out of their pocket. So there's the resale restriction. Also they, of course, hate indies, since those guys sell games without publishers, sometimes very popular ones (Minecraft). So there's this latest shit.
Now the reason for MS to do this would be to make publishers happy and thus to try and bribe them in to exclusives. Convince them to release games only for the Xbox, or at least first for the Xbox. Get a library that nobody else has or can have.
Well if that happens, then who knows where it goes? Maybe people stay mad, they say "fuck you" don't buy the console and so on. Publishers will, of course, go where the money is in the long run and the Xbox will get largely abandoned. It'll be a big failure.
However maybe gamers decide they really want those games. They forget or rationalize away their anger and objections and buy the Xbox and the games. This makes publishers happy and the Xbox gets more games and so on.
Never underestimate how short people's memories can be or what a bunch of pansy-asses gamers can be. An instructive example was Modern Warfare 2. They badly fucked over the PC version of the game and it had a lot of gamers PISSED. There was a "Boycott Modern Warfare 2," Steam group. Had a lot of members. So what happened on release day? You guessed it: Tons of people in that group had bought it and were playing it. Their anger was not enough to keep them from doing what they wanted (http://dbzer0.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Boycott-Modern-Warfare-2.jpg).
Personally I think MS is in for a world of hurt, but we'll see. If they appease the publishers, and the publishers in turn deliver what gamers want, well maybe it works out. I hope not, but it could happen.
Good gawd, pull your head out of the sand and visit some other tech websites. Apple is working with controller manufacturers right now to manufacture controllers specifically designed to work with iOS devices, both by integrating an iPhone into the controller (turning it into a portable game console) or as a remote controller (likely to turn an Apple TV into a game console with the release of iOS 7's update on the Apple TV).
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/06/12/apples-ios-developer-guide-hints-at-dedicated-mfi-game-controller this is the only link I found which is negative especially from an Apple website.
It talks about "third-party manufacturers" using a standard interface,but "Previously, a rumor in March claimed Apple was courting developers at the 2013 Game Developers Conference to sign off on a controller to be released sometime in the near future, but the whispers were squashed by the well-connected Jim Dalrymple of The Loop"
Find some "publisher" that went bust and acquire the name.
They have sold more copies than most major games, have an operating budget larger than most major studios, and employ more than five people.
Mojang was indie back when it was just Notch almost 5 years ago, but not today, not tomorrow. They are a major studio these days.
I want Microsoft to continue to advance these absurd, OBSCENE restrictions and policies on the Xbox One. I want it to get even worse.
But what if people ACTUALLY still go for it? What if it succeeds??
Maybe they are afraid to go the Atari way, although it doesn't apply anymore. Those indie titles are not sold like it was under the Atari model of the 1980's.
[To qualify as a publisher to earn XBLA release slots,] You have to ship some specific quantity of disks to retail.
If this is true, I wonder whether Microsoft put this rule in place to appease retailers that treat consoles as essentially loss leaders to get people in the door to buy higher-margin disc games.
If you want people to read your posts, get to the point. Don't re-post a lengthy ramble full mostly of fluff.
I'm giving MS the benefit of a doubt. They may not have all the details right and is still working them out. Their messaging also has not been very good lately so one group might be saying one thing and another group saying another.
5 months before the release, they "don't may not have all the details right".
Are you being serious?
If anything sinks the Xbox One it's going to be Microsoft's stance against indie developers. But this isn't a new development; it's been a long time in the making.
I've got a friend working for a successful indie developer who also happens fairly extensive contacts in the industry. There is near universal antipathy towards Xbox Live and Microsoft. The company has been so unfriendly towards small developers that even those who've enjoyed considerable success have said they'll never work with Microsoft again.
The reasons are varied. Microsoft gives developers no freedom. They dictate launch dates, pricing and promotions. They're inflexible with multi-platform releases, often prohibiting a release if it was previously available for other platforms. The approval process is slow and painful, with issues often being arbitrary. And despite that, games often launch with glaring bugs, which indicates an overburdened and apathetic certification team. On top of all that, Microsoft is stingy with sales data, so that in my friend's case they had to wait a month or two before they had any indication of how the game was selling. Not that they would have been offered any options to boost sales.
Unfortunately, this crap seems to have spilled over into Windows Phone which is why only games from big publishers ever end up with the Xbox Live connectivity. And therein lies the problem. There seems to be this arrogance to Microsoft that they've always got the big developers to fall back on and so the indies are irrelevant.
Based on what my friend has told me, however, the future isn't the PS4. Sony has gotten better, but they're not great. Nintendo has been making great strides over the past year to lure indie developers but it seems to be too little too late. Nintendo didn't consider them crucial back during the success of the Wii. Most indie developers apparently struggle to be profitable on Android, so that basically stunts the growth of Android-powered consoles right out of the gate. So you're left with iOS and PCs. iOS continues to be attractive, even if it comes with it's own host of issues, one of the big ones being restricted to touch screens, at least for now.
According to my friend, one of the most profitable platforms for them has been Steam. They don't have to deal with much in the way of profit sharing or licensing. Steam let's them do whatever they want, set whatever pricing they like and even give away as many free download coupons as they like. They get immediate and timely updates on sales. And the platform gives them access to one of the biggest gaming markets out there.
This is Microsoft's biggest problem and it will eventually bite them in the ass. Everything else is kind of irrelevant as it's an extension of everything else already present in gaming. But growing up as a PC gamer there's something satisfying about gaming's return to the platform.
The government buys less than 5%.
If folks would stop stockpiling the shortage would end.
I hope that happens soon.
Why give them benefit of the doubt? Have they ever done anything once in their existence that might warrant the benefit of doubt now?
And of course their messaging isn't good, they're required to use Outlook at Microsoft!
Before the first xbox was released, someone I knew in the game industry said he hoped they would succeed. The reasoning is that all the other console makers were exerting very tight control over all the games while collecting a large fraction of the sales price of each individual game, making it economically difficult to make a good profit in the game industry (and this person was part of one of the big gaming houses). His hope was that xbox would break the stranglehold. And sure enough over time once they have a market share worth talking about, Microsoft turns out to be just another one of the bad guys.
It would be nice if the gaming industry(or nvidia since they are not invited to the next gen party) came together with the open source community and develop a linux or bsd (single, just one that's it not hundreds) console distro, turning any pc into a console system with a xbox 360 or ps3 type UI to make things simple and friendly, no full linux OS desktop. Fuck directx. ps4 will be using a modified opengl anyway.
It's ridiculous that you still have to purchase a console dev kit(stiff requirements) these days especially when the hardware is not unique but off the shelf pc parts.
With the 24 hour activation requirement for the xbox one, I doubt it will sell well. Not sure about the ps4, they might also take this route.
Original xbox sold for less than the cost necessary to build one, as I heard it. That makes it clear that their goal was not to sell boxes but to get a large share of the game market. Early moves in this area were designed to gain market share. Over time things have changed, while acquiring more market share they also started looking more like their scummy competition. Now there's not much distinction at all.
Is it me, or is Microsoft trying *really hard* to lose customers? And the idiots just won't leave! Of course, they can't just say "stop buying our stuff".
Feels like MS got a friendly letter about their dominant position from the DOJ or the EU, and they're trying to tell them that even if they build high walls and put large chains and locks on their gates* people still want to get in.
*somebody, somewhere, is now imagining Bill Gates with large chains and locks around him, and smiling.
Question for religious people: where do unrepentant masochists go when they die?
and I hear a lot of complaints from all my hardcore gamer buds and I've seen several rants, but they've all ending their rant with "...but I'll probably buy one anyway".
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or are they not really an Indie anymore, are they? I kept reading the phrase "published by Microsoft" and I get the sense that this bloke now has Microsoft publishing his games. That's great if you won the pot last gen when XBLA was free to all comers, but what if you're just getting started? Or did I miss something? If this guy really doesn't have a publisher then he won't be making XBox One games. If Microsoft will act as his publisher that's great for him, but it still leaves real "Independent" game devs up a creak....
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The console makers strangle each other in their hysterical paranoid greed, leaving the PC as the undisputed king of gaming platforms forever.
The PC always wins. It destroyed console gaming. It will destroy the mobile market next after Apple and Google are found with their hands around each other's throats.
IBM, Valve and Linux win!
hahahahaha
My C-64 had a cartridge port on back AND a keyboard with an OS that you could program.
You did know the C64 was originally designed to be a sort of console/computer hybrid, right? And was released as such in it's original form (less RAM, no serial interface) as the Max in Japan? Commodore decided to turn that thing into a computer later in it's development. In fact it's console roots still exist in the "ultimax" mode.
Let's also not forget the 64GS
Many C64 users only used their machines in a console sort of way, only using them for games and only knowing enough basic to: load "*",8,1
Only parents who hated their kids bought them a dumb device like a console.
Or parents without the money for a full C64 system. Adjusted for inflation the C64 alone, without disk drive or printer or monitor would cost $1400. Which is why though it seems every suburban upper middle class nerd on Slashdot had one...the actual household penetration rate was low...much lower than that of the Atari 2600
You, are ignorant, do you know why? Because console gaming in the home pre-dates PC gaming. Before PC's of any kind, whether Apple, Atari or Commodore 8-bits or the IBM PC achieved any real household penetration, there were consoles. They were simply much more affordable. and much more common. Sure the more affluent kids may have had a C64, or Atari 8-bit, but everyone else had a 2600. Even then household penetration was much lower...don't the the 2600 ever got above 25 percent, which was considered GOOD and much above that of home computers.
A Hat made out of Money!
Obligatory Penny Arcade from 2000:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/10/23/
...the head of Corporate Espionage is congratulating the field agents who have successfully infiltrated Microsoft's strategy meetings and planted this idea.
"Bonuses for you and PS4 consoles for your kids, all around! Good work, team!"
So, what does a publisher do?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"