Doug, just out of curiosity, do you know the cost involved for a company to port to an Xbox? and (I'm sorry if this is a repeat question), but could you share you knowledge of the development process with the forum, also do you know anything about porting over to the new Xbox 360?

I know very little about porting to the XBox360. My guess is, it would not be as easy.

I can't share much information about the XBox development process. I signed many NDAs, and Microsoft does take them seriously. I can say that if I wanted to get a head-start on developing for the XBox without a dev-kit, I would buy a Celeron 733 MHz with 64MB of RAM, a 64 MB GeForce3 video card with TV out, and install Windows2000 and DirectX8 on it.

I would also look into the “Live Arcade” feature of both the XBox and XBox 360. Unless you have a large team (with an even larger amount of funding), you are much more likely to get a game accepted as an “Live Arcade” download than a full retail box.

Doug,

I have a lot of "if's" here but....
1. if I can get Microsoft interested the Rebel Planet for Xbox and...
2. If I can raise the money to pay Bill Gates whatever x amount its going to be and Conitec $50,000 (or whatever it ends up being) and...
3. If I can get Conitec the Xbox development kit...

Assuming all those things are achieved, how long would it take for Conitec to complete the port? Just looking for a very general estimate.

Thanks,
Peter

Honestly? Any estimate I give you without doing some research would be almost completely useless. That said, I will pull out a random number and people will quote this as fact days, months, and years from now. “Doug said that...”**

I'm guessing that it would take 3 to 6 months. Why? Because that sounds about right. Also, talking with some other people that have ported to the XBox, they took roughly that much time. If you can get some of your “if's” taken care of, we can look at this much more seriously and give you a real time table.

**BTW: I've said this a few times already, but we get new people here all the time so here we go again. I (Doug) only work here at Conitec. I tend to talk a lot more on the Forum then the rest of the people at the company but I'm just a “cog in the wheel” of this great company. I know a lot about 3DGS and I'm willing to share my knowledge with our users, but you should never quote me. I don't make policy.

why is porting eve a subject for people , dont u need a good game first , preferably one that has already been a commercial success in the PC gaming industry? I dont porting should even be considered if your just making a game , there's more important things to worry about , like how make a game that doesnt look like it was developed for the commodore 64.

look at the id and epic games , they are mainly PC games , they becan developing ports to consoles of the PC block busters because of their overwhelming popularity , Gamestudio is an engine for windows os systems , I dont see why anyone would need to develop for the xbox when you cant develop for windows. By the way , you CAN develop for the xbox urself , just get an sdk and some good programmers , and your good to go , though if the game your making can be successfull on the xbox , then it will be succesfull on the PC , so why worry about porting in the first place ? Once your a commercial hit , u can find a means to develop for the 360 , and not the outdated , senior citizen status Xbox.

Making a good game is obviously the critical piece and we're all doing the best we can on limited budgets (or in most cases no budgets). But publishers and investors are interested in knowing if you can get the game to console and if you have a plan to do so (for them its all about making money and based on some studies the console market is growing and the PC market is shrinking). A good game development business plan has to take the console market into consideration. The PC market may make a comeback (and I hope it does) but its best to plan for all contingencies.

The picture I had about porting is 3dgs being able to create CD content ready to be popped into a xbox. That is not really porting, its a cross platform engine. with xbox360 on the horizon, maybe Microsoft will loosen their licence restrictions for xbox, and make it affordable to enable A6 to run on it. This will broaden Conitec customer range aswell. It might even start a new group of indies that can develop for xbox.

Just so that I can grasp the entire problem, what exactly are the hurdles that keep us from pushing that "publish to xbox" button? Is it money?

Money is one, but use is another...as in "Will enough people use this feature to make it profitable to develop?".

After all, we are all aware of the glorious success the 3DGS community has had in pushing dozens upon dozens of successful Windows games every year; it's a question of whether the community can do the same for Macs or Linuxs.

(PS: My apologies to the sarcastically deprived)