Xbox One 'Easily The Most Appealing Platform For Devs Like Us' Says Indie Studio
Ryan King
Indie studio No Goblin announces Roundabout for Xbox One and has nothing but praise for ID@Xbox.
Published on Feb 11, 2014
No Goblin has announced its debut game Roundabout will be released for Xbox One, before going on to praise ID@Xbox as 'easily the most appealing console platform for developers like us to release on.'
Car-crashing game Roundabout had already been confirmed for release on Windows, Mac and Linux and will now be heading to Xbox One as well, although no release date has been revealed yet.
No Goblin had nothing but praise for ID@Xbox, the indie development program for Xbox One.
"A huge thanks has to go to Chris Charla and Richard Rouse over at the ID@Xbox team for making what’s easily the most appealing console platform for developers like us to release on," No Goblin's blog reads.
"Diving into the Xbox One universe has been super easy for us, and Chris and Richard have been incredibly responsive and helpful in dealing with all of my old man game developer quirks. Personally, I think ID@Xbox is going to take a lot of people by surprise. We’re super honored to be included with one of the first waves of developers to release through the program."] Worms Battleground and Nutjitsu were confirmed yesterday as two other ID@Xbox titles that will be among the first shipped.
Are we still doing our video game heritage? Seems like fun.
Magnavox Odyssey 2 (played this from age 3 to age 17 - it was awesome)
Nintendo Entertainment System (with the GREY gun - better then orange)
Tandy Color Computer (TRS 80 - had to code my own games in)
Tiger Handheld MegaMan game (was AWESOME for car rides)
Apple Macintosh Classic (SimAnt on a 6" BW screen - for HOURS)
Super Nintendo (haduken! kupo!)
PC: 486DX4100 (faster then a Pentium 90 - heloooo Doom + sounds)
Playstation (I had a thing for purple suits and spikey hair for a couple years)
Sega Dreamcast (it was a phase I was going through... also Crazy Taxi was the #####)
Gameboy Color: I totally didn't play pokemon, I swear (I'm lying)
PC: AMD Athlon2 with a graphics card (heloooo Counterstrike/Unreal Tournament, Baldur's Gate 2)
Gamecube (traded dreamcast in for this + Super Smash Bros)
Xbox (friends convinced me Halo was fun)
PC: upgraded, can't remember to what - but it could play WoW so I did that
Wii (this was a waste of money - but I did get River City Rampage on it, so that's cool)
Xbox360: Halo 3 came out. Also DragonAge. Also Mass Effect.
Nintendo DS: no idea why I got this. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
PS3: wanted to play God of War, only used it to watch netflix and the one Blue Ray someone gave me 4 years ago. I often hear it's lonely cries late at night.
iPhone: not sure if this counts, I played Angry birds for about 5 minutes once
PC: upgraded again - can play anything I want whenever I want. I have ascended to master race and look down upon all you peasants twiddling your thumbsticks. Skyrim with mods is the bestest thing ever.
(probably getting a PS4 when I find one)
I'm surprised consoles are still a thing to be honest. All they are now is a small form factor PC with HDMI output and a customized/closed operating system.
It's especially weird that this latest generation have most of their media capabilities disabled or restricted - makes you question the point of them as an entertainment device.
I have no dog in this fight, but man that sounds like bought praise if I've ever heard it
I think the developer forgot to add something in his blog post.
Spoiler!
XB1M13
Joking aside, hopefully it's the start of Microsoft turning around their approach to indies for the better. Still feel bad for those poor Skull of the Shogun guys.
I think ID@XBOX still imposes their Day One parity demand though - glad some guys like Vlambeer were able to find a way to get around it.
Well, they are a business after all and are looking to make some money. I'm a little worried about the build quality from the Major Nelson vine - but that's tough to say from just the picture.
Looks like Digital Foundry finally got some time with the Titanfall Beta and the numerous 720p rumors weren't too far off the mark (not surprising given all the games we've seen on the Xbone to date). 792p seems somewhat unusual but sounds like there might be some hope to bump the resolution and stabilize the frame rate a bit more before release but PC will probably still be the master race.
I'm sure they'll have more information as we move towards the release date.
Based on some extended edge-counts from the game's stark tutorial section, our best guess right now is that 1408x792 is pretty close to Respawn's chosen rendering resolution. The overall effect is pretty similar to 720p overall though, and the implementation of an overly sharp filter across the entire image suggests that the Xbox One hardware scaler is used to blow up the image to 1080p. We're not exactly impressed by that and, we suspect, neither was DICE - hence the move on Battlefield 4 from Microsoft's scaler to a bespoke software solution between the preview and final code we played.
Probably the biggest surprise is that, based on our testing, frame-rate doesn't quite remain locked to 60fps - not especially noticeable in most situations, but definitely more of an issue inside the titans.
792p seems somewhat unusual but sounds like there might be some hope to bump the resolution and stabilize the frame rate a bit more before release but PC will probably still be the master race.
Probably? Pfff... Like it's even close.
The Following User Says Thank You to cDnStealth For This Useful Post:
Visually, at least on first glance, Titanfall seems undercharged for a bona fide next-gen game. However, the excellent art direction does help both stages feel distinct, and make their layouts easy to memorise. Animations on loading into a Titan cockpit counts as the biggest stand-out "wow" moment too, and there are enough effects on the go to toe the line with Platinum Games' most frenetic output. But while most of its technical design is built to typically hold at 60fps, it's a little disappointing to find most Titan-on-Titan action gets a bit choppy once the missiles start flying. For those interested, Digital Foundry will be covering this in greater depth in the coming days.
Which leaves us with a question that may well go unanswered until after March 14; is this the next big event in multiplayer shooters? Putting the behind-the-scenes development drama aside, it's a relief to find that Respawn can sell on the merits of great game design. It's perhaps too much to hope that Titanfall's appeal will compare to Infinity Ward's output at its peak, but every franchise needs its start. With controls and map design that are this on-point though, it makes a convincing argument for a long-term plan for the series.
And there are still some unknowns. The final release's map count remains something of a mystery, which could affect the value proposition of what's set to be a full-priced game. I also remain in the dark when it comes to knowing how the promised Multiplayer Campaign mode will fill in the narrative blanks. Given the cookie-cutter sci-fi premise, it's perhaps for the best that the story will unfold mostly in the background of the action. But having played the game at length and seeing the core mechanics unveil themselves, I'm at least confident Respawn knows what it's doing in every other department.
Well, some people apparently can't tell the difference between native 720p and 1080p. Some might even claim to "prefer" the lower resolution. Come to think of it, Respawn might as well move it from 792p down to 480p to fully lock the frame rate to 60 fps.
Or aka, buy the 360 version.
Anybody pre-order the collector's edition as well? It looks rather large - good for disposing of dead bodies though!
To be fair to Titanfall, the game is using the Source engine. The fact that it looks as good as it does on a 10 year old engine is impressive.
I'm sure it'll be fine, this is just the beta version after all anyhow.
Hmmm, I don't have a good feel for what games used the same engine in the last year or two. There might be a ton of tweeks/updates since it was first released right?
I'm sure it'll be fine, this is just the beta version after all anyhow.
Hmmm, I don't have a good feel for what games used the same engine in the last year or two. There might be a ton of tweeks/updates since it was first released right?
The Source Engine? Yes it's seen various updates over the years. This is Valve's engine, used in (obviously) Half Life 2, TF2, L4D 1&2 and Portal 1&2. Recent games would include the likes of DoTA 2, The Stanley Parable, Contagion, Dear Esther and Insurgency.
I'm surprised consoles are still a thing to be honest. All they are now is a small form factor PC with HDMI output and a customized/closed operating system.
I spent a week comparing the Xbox One and the PS4, and in my opinion, the PlayStation is the one to buy — if you’re going to buy a console at all. More on that later.
The Xbox One’s inclusion of Kinect is one reason it costs $500, compared with $400 for the PS4. In Xbox One, Kinect has a wider viewing angle, higher-quality image and facial recognition for identifying individual users. It says, “Hi, Molly” when I sit down on the couch, and then loads my personalized dashboard and recent activities. It’s cool and futuristic, but works inconsistently.
I found myself using basic commands like “Xbox, go home,” and then navigating the rest using the controller or my TiVo remote. And I found it annoying to have to go through the Xbox to get to TV every time. My 6-year-old son loved shouting commands at the console; unfortunately it rarely recognized his voice, and his attraction soon faded.
All this description illustrates the overall fatal flaw of the Xbox One: It’s too much work.
I spent hours setting up the Xbox One. It was in my home for two full days before I enjoyed even a second of game play; there were technical issues with its TV integration (solved by swapping out an HDMI cable after 90 minutes of troubleshooting), and there were endless updates to download.
By comparison, the PlayStation 4 was a delight to set up and enjoy. I plugged it in, downloaded a relatively tiny 300MB update, spent about 10 minutes setting up my PlayStation Network profile and was playing games 10 minutes after that.
Speed is everywhere. The menu and navigation screens on the PS4 are startlingly fast and responsive. Games load noticeably quickly — much faster than the Xbox games, even after updates.
I would argue that most things on the Xbox One are hidden or harder to use than they need to be. In my time with the PlayStation 4, I found it straightforward and, most important, fun. That ought to be the highest pursuit of a device invented for playing games, so for my money, the keep-it-simple philosophy of the PlayStation 4, plus the $100 price break, make it the winner.
The real question, though, is whether the idea of a console itself is out of date.
And spending $60 for games — no matter how graphically intensive — is hard to stomach in a world of low-priced apps. The game costs are especially painful since neither the Xbox nor the PlayStation can play games from the previous generation consoles.
So, the PlayStation is the better game console of the two, but in the end, it may be a victory of one dinosaur over another.
I'm surprised consoles are still a thing to be honest. All they are now is a small form factor PC with HDMI output and a customized/closed operating system.
It's especially weird that this latest generation have most of their media capabilities disabled or restricted - makes you question the point of them as an entertainment device.
I'm not surprised because that is exactly what I (and obviously others) desire: a small form factor PC with HDMI output and a customized/closed operating system. Plus, in the long run $400 PS4 for seven years of use is very manageable compared to what a PC gets you after seven years.
I don't want to spend 15 minutes setting up hdmi cables and controllers and updates and finding a temp place for pc/laptop and the list goes on and on and on. It's not streamlined or convenient at all, and it takes time away from gaming.
If I want to play a few games of fifa I'm not spending 33% of my gaming time setting things up, when I could jump into ps4 fifa game in a minute.
The only thing that really grinds my gears are all the multimedia features that did not carry over from the PS3 to PS4. There is absolutely NO excuse for that and now I have to spend 15 minutes hooking up my laptop to my tv to watch a movie (if I didn't have my PS3).
Sony took away mp3 support and now want me to sign up for a free trial of Music Unlimited? ##### you Sony.
Latest console sales numbers are in for the week. PS4 continues to it's high sales while Wii U continues to see a sharp drop off post December.
Lifetime numbers for consoles so far
I'm wondering at this point what Nintendo's strategy here is. What they have here is an expensive console (hardware vs performance vs price) that no one else wants to develop for, extremely poor online support by all accounts dev or otherwise, peripherals even their own devs don't really use properly and on top of all extreme marketing confusion.
Some analysts are predicting only 3 million console sales for them for FY14. That's rock bottom compared to their Wii numbers. Link
New Infamous Second Sons gameplay interview from the Escapist is out. Looks fairly interesting
^ I think latest NPD (USA) numbers are out tomorrow night as well.
Man, PS4 still able to sell that many more Xbones while being so supply constrained. And they still haven't even started selling in Japan yet (in about 2 weeks I think). Sales are at least somewhat close in North America but Europe is already more than 2:1 sales to date and pulling away if the weekly sales keep up at a 4:1 pace. Asia/Japan is probably a lost cause for Microsoft at least in terms of comparable console sales numbers given the history with 360 but who knows.
Will it be til March/April until we see PS4 being readily in stock around the world? Maybe?
I wonder if Microsoft is cool with staying the course or if they'll shake it up with a new SKU or an official price drop. Apparently Europe is seeing some token retail price drops already but nothing sizable or official. Still early in the console lifetime for both but certainly interesting times!
Poor Nintendo though! Maybe they'll release the Wii UU!
