XNA games. First results.

[Arctic Permafrost]

I like the vision that guy in the video talk about, being able to share homebrew games over XBOX Live Marketplace in the future would be fantastic. "The Youtube of games", you can't say they aren't ambitious...

Well, imo, small developers are key to the new generation, they can provide great ideas and fresh inspiration, and without finantial investors joining them they don't have any options but to keep in oblivion.

99$ per year is a heck of a good price, I can see lot's of potential in here.

Maybe in 10 years we'll have thousands of XNA games and XTS -or another platform with a similar service- could be the console with most games ever.

Years ago, there was a lot of small devs. But Sony's politics (PS1 era) changed all of that. Unfortunately, MS and Nintendo have been also following the same politics.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Years ago, there was a lot of small devs. But Sony's politics (PS1 era) changed all of that. Unfortunately, MS and Nintendo have been also following the same politics.

Huh? How did Sony's politics kill the small devs?

 

[Arctic Permafrost]

Huh? How did Sony's politics kill the small devs?

They put pressure on the studios, thus increasing production prices. Moreover, Sony created a global market distinctively different from previous eras.

They started the age of exclusivities, with a number of different types of games that couldn't be played in other consoles and they allowed rampant piracy the early days to stablish the market. Only most of the big developers survived the bust better than the small ones.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They put pressure on the studios, thus increasing production prices. Moreover, Sony created a global market distinctively different from previous eras.

They started the age of exclusivities, with a number of different types of games that couldn't be played in other consoles and they allowed rampant piracy the early days to stablish the market. Only most of the big developers survived the bust better than the small ones.

What pressure did they put on studios? From what I've read, PS1 was an easy platform to develop for that attracted attention and was accessible for smaller developers. The fact games cost more than previous was just a matter of larger format, no? Games were moving to CD anyway, and the alternative was Nintendo with their rather controlling treatment of devs from what I've heard.

The age of exclusives...HUH?!!!! You're saying there weren't exclusives on Megadrve and SNES? Or Master System and NES? And how did Sony make that happen with their politics? They had a successful platform that attracted development to a huge market. How is that keeping out the smaller developers, where they didn't need as large a market adoption to get higher sales? Surely that's a good thing for smaller devs? And as for allowing rampant piracy to establish a market, that to me sounds of rampant conspiracy theory. Company's don't willingly lose money or happily condone piracy.

I think the loss of smaller developers was to changes in the software market, which had little to do with the hardware people. Most of those smaller developers started way back in 8 bit and 16 bit days (all of which had their fair share of exclusives), and just couldn't adapt to the growth of the technology, while at the same time the publishers became more conservative and controlling. They produced games, and those games didn't sell, and they went bust. I can't see how any hardware company can be blamed for that, especially when you can offer devs a later market of 40-100 million consoles depending on when your game was released. If a small develop wrote a game for PS1 and they lost money, that's because they're game didn't appeal to the market. Unless Sony were only allowing games that wouldn't sell, how were they accountable?