Squad Should Ask Microsoft For A Free Xbox One Development Kit

[cristof12]

Look at the lag we have on PC with the best computers (i7-3960k and gtx 780, exemple). Xbox one has ****ty specs. How do you think the game will run ? The kids will cry because of the lag. It will never go on console without serious optimization.

[cesarcurado]

And... let the flame wars begin! I think xbox one has a lot of potential, since it abandoned it's BS policies and Don Mattrick left but porting and setting the controls would be a pain for small teams such as Squad, so, problably not going to happen.

[BostLabs]

And... let the flame wars begin! .

i have a feeling, it will be a vey short war as there is eyes already on this topic.

[NeoMorph]

LOL... who said that Squad would have to make KSP on the XBone? Read my first post...

Seriously, Microsoft are giving away free dev kits to indies..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23765453

I was just thinking that as MS are giving them away FREE that they could use it to relax after a hard day's coding of KSP is all...

That said, Minecraft is ultimately the quintessential PC game but had been a best seller on Xbox 360. Go figure. Hell, if Squad only make a Kerbaliser for Xbone it would rock lol.

[Wesreidau]

"You are easily irritated and your mother is of dubious repute."

"My mother is a saint!"

"You sound irritated, Q.E.D."

Congratulations, you sought and got a rise out of someone and quoted Latin so as not to seem childish while doing so. Would you like a cookie? No? Then lets talk about the subject this thread is about, not your opinion of PC gamers or how witty you are.

I don't see this game being successful on any console because of the GUI not translating well to a television several yards away from the couch. Trying to read humorous quips in the VAB will be an eye-straining headache, much as Morrowind's X-Box release was a whole lot of squinting at a CRT screen until you could see each color in the pixel making up the letters. Its not feasible for such a data-driven game to be ported over, and enlarging the font won't make the UI any more appealing either.

[Wesreidau]

That said, Minecraft is ultimately the quintessential PC game but had been a best seller on Xbox 360. Go figure. Hell, if Squad only make a Kerbaliser for Xbone it would rock lol.

I strongly disagree. Minecraft can be played by an illiterate five year old. I've seen it done. There's no reading, no story, no settings, no typing, and most of the puzzles involve jumping between blocks. It is far more in the way of Tetris or Super Mario than it is X-Com or SimCity, two games nearly incompatible with a console.

[air805ronin]

I don't see this game being successful on any console because of the GUI not translating well to a television several yards away from the couch. Trying to read humorous quips in the VAB will be an eye-straining headache, much as Morrowind's X-Box release was a whole lot of squinting at a CRT screen until you could see each color in the pixel making up the letters. Its not feasible for such a data-driven game to be ported over, and enlarging the font won't make the UI any more appealing either.

Personally, and it may have just been the combo of my TV at the time and my xbox, but I had no issues at all playing Morrowind on the xbox aside from the normal ones like taking 10 minutes to kill something with a sword or trying for an hour to find the right place to go for a quest. Take that with a grain of salt. I had a 27 inch CRT TV at the time.

Interestingly I play a lot of games on my TV via HDMI cable. I just did a flight with KSP while controlling with a wireless mouse and keyboard. Indeed you are correct, the UI is abysmal on a television. Other such games that have abysmal UI settings for my television are Shogun Total War 2 and Prison Architect.

I may have been able to fix some of this by dropping to a lower resolution. A better solution would be a UI scaling slider in the game options (which may have been available in Total War, i didn't look).

[allmappedout]

It is far more in the way of Tetris or Super Mario than it is X-Com or SimCity, two games nearly incompatible with a console.

You mean the same X-com that won multiple console awards and best of show awards when it was released? Look, guys, as I stated before, the game, as it stands, isn't going to work on the xbox. The full 1.0 might, and could. But it's not a focus of SQUAD, it's not even about optimisation. Everyone on this is looking short term. For all we know there could be huge gains in efficiency further on.

But it's a pointless debate unless you're objective about it, and it's also pointless cause it ain't happening.

[pxi]

"PC master race"

Really, was there any need for this?

The main issue I have with Microsoft is they have been a pretty horrible company in general over the years. Rolling back on the limits they were going to place on the Xbox One only happened after the internet reacted with a massive case of 'do not want'. It still remains to see what happens a year, or three years down the road. It is entirely possible that these policies will be reintroduced.

Bear in mind that this was the company that brought us the phrase 'embrace, extend and extinguish'.

[NeoMorph]

I think if KSP ever ends up on a console it will be the Steam Box tbh. The game is already on Steam so it probably wouldn't be that much of a leap.

Rolling back on the limits they were going to place on the Xbox One only happened after the internet reacted with a massive case of 'do not want'. It still remains to see what happens a year, or three years down the road. It is entirely possible that these policies will be reintroduced.

To be honest I wish they hadn't rolled back the original way they were going to handle it. It was the most logically thought out way of doing things imho. But then again I tend to keep all my games. Being able to access the games from the cloud would have been awesome. OK, some people are still stuck in the 90's and want to keep their hold on the physical hardware of the games disk. I would have liked it to be like Steam does it.

Personally I think that the bad rep that the XBone has is all generated from Sony... they kicked off the scare mongering and then the internet went crazy. I'm not going to take notice and happily take delivery of my XBone on launch day. I wouldn't trust Sony with their security record tbh. Strange how the public forgot what has happened in the last decade regarding Sony... remember when you could load your own OS onto the PS3? GONE... Remember when Sony lost all that personal data... GONE.. Probably other stuff too. What's been bad with MS?

Edited August 20, 2013 by NeoMorph

[SpaceHole]

Since you originally thought it was Greek...well..I can only assume this is your chance to learn the phrase. I took 6 years of Latin and I'm relatively amused he used it. You don't see people use Latin very often.

This saying actually originates from the greek - i know that the text is latin - had to learn it in school ...

Still though you are being pretty rabidly anti-Microsoft in the manner in which you're making your points, and admitting to the hypocrisy even. I, on the other hand, am one of like 20 people who actually thought the original pitch during E3 that they have since rolled back almost every interesting facet of. It seemed like they were really trying to promote something very different, as opposed to what we had during the 360 vs PS3 years where the boxes were roughly similar.

Force kinect - a device many bought - and stopped using soon? Always online? Rent movies based on the ammount of people in your room?

and so on.

The problem is those features can be good - yet why force them on everyone when many people will have huge problems with it - not to mention privacy concerns?

Most arguments by MS were simply made up - like digital distribution benefits. One can implement all those digital distribution benefits yet still sell it in stores with normal "only play with disc in drive etc.)

From my point of view most of the thigns you consider "features" simply were things that MS wanted to gain more control over software and hardware. Not to mention lots of things i would almost consider lies (like the cloud parts they were completely exaggerated)

Now, with all their policy retractions, we are back to the status quo. Boxes of roughly equal power duking it out and relying upon exlusive content. Now we're likely to get a free game because they want to show similar value to the PS4.

And now you are exaggerating - what would have been so much different for the end-user?

Also lets be honest here consoles have become more and more similar - not to mention that exclusives rarely are a good thing financially for the game-publishers which is why most games will end up multi-plattform.

The days when it really made a difference which console you bought are long gone.

I'm still trying to figure out what is so anti-consumerist of a company willing to walk back all of their policies because the hard core on the internet complained about it. They didn't get the preorders they wanted, so they changed policies. Last I checked thier preorders are still selling out, and the PS4 is selling 4 times as many at some retailers.

There is a difference between doing for the right or for the wrong reasons. They did it because they had to the XBox One marketing was a disaster. Especially due to awful comments (submarine comment), false information (the support-twitter accounts probably just didnt have enough information), and lies again (as far as i remember there was some backlash against always on way before the presentation - they said something like "we will clear everything up at xy " - in reality they just ignored everythign and thought that people would forget over time.

But to be honest my view on MS is mainly due to Windows 8, the new Office Subscription plans etc.

I'm fortelling this Christmas season that PS4 will not be able to keep up with demand, and many people will notice that the only difference between the two is exclusive games. Some will switch.

I doubt that since both consoles will probably have major supply problems also i dont care i wont buy a new console (had the ps3 rarely used it) yet i dissagree with you.

Both are rather similar - yes - yet the PS4 will sell way better for a simple reason - the inital cost of the console is 100 Dollars less which is a lot. Not to mention that all TV-Features are pointless to most people out of the US (from what i heard those features wont be usable in most other countries at least at the launch).

And I think KSP could easily be mapped to a dual stick controller like the Ps4 and Xbox, and the new generation has the same amount of power as many who post to these very forums. Many people already play with xbox controllers on many PC games. When they finish this game, I wouldn't blame them if they experimented with an xbox or Ps4 release.

I never doubted that. Constructing might be a bit annoying. The sticks are probably nice to fly. Yet the big problems prevails modding wont be possible - patches will be hard to do and especially MS seems to dislike any free addons.

edit: and regarding patching, they are automatic like Steam. A developer pushes it out and it goes to everyone the next time they fire the game up. Both Microsoft and Sony used to make developers pay to release patches (an old trick to try to keep the number of patches down) but recently that was retracted. As evidence, Phil Fish finally fixed his game breaking bug in Fez and promptly quit the industry...

From what i head you cant simply roll out patches on a console. You have to go trough a process of testing and authorization as far as i know. Maybe someone can clear that one up. (but i doubt i am wrong since just think about what would happen if everyone can just roll out patches and someone messes up the console)

[SpaceHole]

I spent most of my adult life as a blue collar worker. Not much use of Latin there. I see it more often now that I'm no longer a blue collar worker. Old dog, new tricks.

in other words, you don't see Joe Sixpack spouting off stuff like that. He would be much more blunt and offensive to boot.

Well try not to be fooled by such things. Most people i know that like to use such phrases a lot simply try to impress others with it. Its rather easy to just learn some of those phrases and use them.

From my point of view the most inteligent form of cummunication is the one that is easiest to understand. It takes much more to write complex things in a way that everyone can understand than to just use a bajillion of foreign-words.

[SpaceHole]

To be honest I wish they hadn't rolled back the original way they were going to handle it. It was the most logically thought out way of doing things imho. But then again I tend to keep all my games. Being able to access the games from the cloud would have been awesome. OK, some people are still stuck in the 90's and want to keep their hold on the physical hardware of the games disk. I would have liked it to be like Steam does it.

Personally I think that the bad rep that the XBone has is all generated from Sony... they kicked off the scare mongering and then the internet went crazy. I'm not going to take notice and happily take delivery of my XBone on launch day. I wouldn't trust Sony with their security record tbh. Strange how the public forgot what has happened in the last decade regarding Sony... remember when you could load your own OS onto the PS3? GONE... Remember when Sony lost all that personal data... GONE.. Probably other stuff too. What's been bad with MS?

That is one of the things i dont get.

What has digital distribution to do with the cloud? Its not a problem at all to have play-from-disc and digital distribution at the same time.

Also what do you mean by access from the cloud?

I never heard of such a feature. (at least from the Xbox One)

Loading a game from the cloud too play is not an option (connections are not fast enough), streaming a game is an option but seem to be not that great also gives you more lag not to mention that there was no way in hell MS would have implemented a streaming-service for free. And a combination of cloud + console has been discussed a lot but in reality it would boil down to very few things that could be done. Not to mention that "cloud" means nothing and many times when people talk about cloud features i would rather call it "server" - a thing we have since decades in online-gaming.

So i dont see why people are stuck in the 90's when they prefere to have more options?

The bad rep the XBone has is from a marketing disaster. Which is probably why they changed a lot lately.

It also didnt help MS that they were trying to force always online and a mandatory camera in your living room while beeing involved in an NSA-Privacy-Scandal.

Edited August 20, 2013 by SpaceHole

[air805ronin]

Lots and lots of stuff

Since the thread is primarily about why Squad should get a dev kit while they're free (and I guess the questions of "should KSP be ported?"), I'll offer that if you want to discuss about your concerns about the Xbox One I can do it via private message. as it is I get the feeling that you are operating off of old news, old rumours, and general security paranoia.

[JakeGrey]

To be honest I wish they hadn't rolled back the original way they were going to handle it. It was the most logically thought out way of doing things imho. But then again I tend to keep all my games. Being able to access the games from the cloud would have been awesome. OK, some people are still stuck in the 90's and want to keep their hold on the physical hardware of the games disk. I would have liked it to be like Steam does it.

Not everyone is in a position to download a whole DVD's worth of data on a regular basis. My data plan used to top out at 10GB a month, and if I go over that I pay £1 a gigabyte; it's actually cheaper to just buy the DVD-ROM on Amazon or eBay and have it shipped.

[SpaceHole]

Since the thread is primarily about why Squad should get a dev kit while they're free (and I guess the questions of "should KSP be ported?"), I'll offer that if you want to discuss about your concerns about the Xbox One I can do it via private message. as it is I get the feeling that you are operating off of old news, old rumours, and general security paranoia.

I just answed the posts of other people which took a lot of text ...

Also about the dev-kit what are the requirements to get it? I doubt they will send it to anyone calling himself an Indie-Developer.

[air805ronin]

I just answed the posts of other people which took a lot of text ...

Also about the dev-kit what are the requirements to get it? I doubt they will send it to anyone calling himself an Indie-Developer.

Devs fill out a form and the priority on free kits goes to companies that have previously shipped console games, then those who have shipped games, and then to those with proven development experience. Squad would probably fall pretty far down that list with only KSP to their name.

Also regarding your patch question from earlier, yes all consoles require validation and testing of patches. This stems from the fact that console games, in theory, are not supposed to be patched regularly. Nintendo created their validation program back in the NES days to make sure only high quality games were released, helping improve public opinion after the debacle of crap-ware from the commodore 64 and atari days. This has continued to present day where they try to enforce quality standards on console games. Interesting article on the Fez debacle: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/microsoft-comes-under-fire-for-five-figure-xbox-360-patch-fee/ (pushing updates is now free, as of about a month ago)

[NeoMorph]

That is one of the things i dont get.

What has digital distribution to do with the cloud? Its not a problem at all to have play-from-disc and digital distribution at the same time.

Also what do you mean by access from the cloud?

I never heard of such a feature. (at least from the Xbox One)

Loading a game from the cloud too play is not an option (connections are not fast enough), streaming a game is an option but seem to be not that great also gives you more lag not to mention that there was no way in hell MS would have implemented a streaming-service for free. And a combination of cloud + console has been discussed a lot but in reality it would boil down to very few things that could be done. Not to mention that "cloud" means nothing and many times when people talk about cloud features i would rather call it "server" - a thing we have since decades in online-gaming.

So i dont see why people are stuck in the 90's when they prefere to have more options?

The bad rep the XBone has is from a marketing disaster. Which is probably why they changed a lot lately.

It also didnt help MS that they were trying to force always online and a mandatory camera in your living room while beeing involved in an NSA-Privacy-Scandal.

My god... SOMEONE WHO GETS IT!

The option was that when you registered the game at your home console you could actually go to a family or friends house and download the entire game onto their computer if you wanted. The game would be limited in play time but it would have let your friends and family play your games to try them out like the demos of today ONLY THEY ARE THE FULL GAME... So when they bought the game it just removes the wall stopping further play and anything you had completed was already done. No starting from scratch like demos.

Then there was the option to buy fully digital games like you do from Steam. Or like how you get your music from Apple... BUT GAMERS WANTED PHYSICAL DISCS... for one reason... selling them on to second hand shops and buying second hand games. I've never been happy with that as it is essentially working like distributing copies of the game. Devs can sell one disk and that disk is used by several gamers. Say that game is sold on 4 times... that is 4 sales that the dev is going to lose out on. So instead of the devs getting the money to put into the next game it's the second hand shop that is ripping the gamers off all for being the middle man.

The second hand shop doesn't make the game. It pays the gamers a tiny portion of what the game is worth and then passes it onto other gamers for a silly price. Does my head in.

[boxman]

To be honest I wish they hadn't rolled back the original way they were going to handle it. It was the most logically thought out way of doing things imho. But then again I tend to keep all my games. Being able to access the games from the cloud would have been awesome. OK, some people are still stuck in the 90's and want to keep their hold on the physical hardware of the games disk. I would have liked it to be like Steam does it.

Dont be so naive... How they advertise cloud these days is nothing but a way to spin it from the fact that it is used as DRM system in microsoft case. Why do you want to lose your rights like that?? And you could already download these very same games through xbox live/psn store already.

The way microsoft would use the cloud would at best be for your savegames, and would not improve performance at all. It is just used to kill the physical unrestricted copies so you cannot sell them second hand.

Why do you want games that will stop working in a few years when servers are shut down?? This is what happens with such "cloud services".. When I buy a game i expect to be able to play it even in a decade or two if i have the hardware to play them on. This wont be possible with the so called cloud and your console will basically just become a worthless brick after a while and all your games will be gone...

And do you know what I do when my internet goes down?? I fire up a pc or console game... With such DRM this would not be possible either so I would not even be able to play games when i feel like playing games the most.

At least as it is now we have a choice. If you dont mind losing your copy in years from now then you can go buy a digital copy on PSN store or xbox live marketplace.

[SpaceHole]

My god... SOMEONE WHO GETS IT!

The option was that when you registered the game at your home console you could actually go to a family or friends house and download the entire game onto their computer if you wanted. The game would be limited in play time but it would have let your friends and family play your games to try them out like the demos of today ONLY THEY ARE THE FULL GAME... So when they bought the game it just removes the wall stopping further play and anything you had completed was already done. No starting from scratch like demos.

Then there was the option to buy fully digital games like you do from Steam. Or like how you get your music from Apple... BUT GAMERS WANTED PHYSICAL DISCS... for one reason... selling them on to second hand shops and buying second hand games. I've never been happy with that as it is essentially working like distributing copies of the game. Devs can sell one disk and that disk is used by several gamers. Say that game is sold on 4 times... that is 4 sales that the dev is going to lose out on. So instead of the devs getting the money to put into the next game it's the second hand shop that is ripping the gamers off all for being the middle man.

The second hand shop doesn't make the game. It pays the gamers a tiny portion of what the game is worth and then passes it onto other gamers for a silly price. Does my head in.

Besides the fact that Option was would probably have quite some limitations since otherwise publishers would go crazy there are to other problems:

1) Space on your console is limited - games are rather big i wonder how many games can be on your console at any given time (+ not to mention space used by the system etc.)

2) there is no reason whatsoever why this wouldnt be possible now - they could have stlill made this and simply make those games only playable while both systems are online

3) now your going all out with download and cloud yet all of a sudden downloading a demo and a game is a problem?

So what people want ownership of things they bought. Seems rather reasonable to me yet you still cant explain why we cant have both systems?

Also it is very reasonable to want both systems from a company like MS with others in the background like EA known for shuttong down online-services of games - BRB have fun playing your old EA-Games online ... (yeah i would totally trust them) Just imagine playing on your SNES these days now what would happen if your SNES was a Always-Online-Cloud console - yeah it would be garbage by now.

The second hand shop argument is stupid. Pretty much every other market works like this and there is no difference. One could argue that every game is the same and wont loose quality over time. Which is wrong since games do loose in value - a lot.

So since you are anti-second-hand - would you mind if car-producers would decide that from now on your car can only be used by one person - the one who bought it and never be resold?

The Developer-Argument is also no argument you might wanna read about how Publishers work. Most of the money from sales will benefit the retail and the publisher - not the developer.

(But yes i agree that some of those bigger second hand shops are pretty much ripping of their customers)

Also second hand sales of software are good for sales since many sell old games - and buy new games with the money they got for the old one.

If i build a desk out of stainless steel and sell it to you - should i get money when you resell it? - should i get money when the next person resells it? should you then get money too?

Why are people pretending that this is so much different? It is probly even better for the producer - he can make infinite copies for free and sell them, the guy producing talbes has to actually pay for the production and materials of each table.

As i said before digital goods may wont just break apart but they will loose value as well - and at some point probably be hardly or not playable at all.

Edited August 20, 2013 by SpaceHole

[NeoMorph]

Dude, my point about the second hand market is that it is crazy that a second hand game shop can make the equivalent of making the game (or more depending how many times a title is sold). If you sell a second hand car it depreciates in value... a LOT. Could you sell a second hand car (not a vintage... those go for crazy prices) multiple times and get more than the initial sale price? Rarely.

And you are right that most of the money from sales ends up going to retail and the publisher... that is why games are so freaking expensive these days and why they break games apart and sell them to you bit by bit in DLC packs. When you buy DLC a good portion of it goes back to the developers AND YOU CAN'T SELL IT SECOND HAND.

But I don't know whether it was Sony (probably) or the second hand stores (also probably) that put out the bad press that made the gamers go "OMGZENDZOFTHAWORLDZ" and start ranting on YouTube. Either way, Sony will be laughing to the bank... and yeah, laughing at the gamers for ignoring the past.

Hey, how did we get on this subject in the first place????

[SpaceHole]

Dude, my point about the second hand market is that it is crazy that a second hand game shop can make the equivalent of making the game (or more depending how many times a title is sold). If you sell a second hand car it depreciates in value... a LOT. Could you sell a second hand car (not a vintage... those go for crazy prices) multiple times and get more than the initial sale price? Rarely.

And you are right that most of the money from sales ends up going to retail and the publisher... that is why games are so freaking expensive these days and why they break games apart and sell them to you bit by bit in DLC packs. When you buy DLC a good portion of it goes back to the developers AND YOU CAN'T SELL IT SECOND HAND.

But I don't know whether it was Sony (probably) or the second hand stores (also probably) that put out the bad press that made the gamers go "OMGZENDZOFTHAWORLDZ" and start ranting on YouTube. Either way, Sony will be laughing to the bank... and yeah, laughing at the gamers for ignoring the past.

Hey, how did we get on this subject in the first place????

The second-hand shop pays for the employees, the rent and the game they buy.

But most important prices can drop fast drastically so its rather dangerous to have games in stock. If you would sell and resell almost new cars you could also make a lot of money.

If you want to talk about "fairness" you probably should start with the relationship between Publishers and Developers. Or "Artists" and their labels/publishers or whatever in general.

What do you mean by selling it multiple times? I can obviously only sell it once and there are many objects that will do what you just described - as an example apartments.

I never said all of this wasnt odd but its not something that only exists in gaming.

What do you mean by your last posting about sony?

Some guy tried to start a console war - it failed - i somehow still tried to explain my views on the "new MS" and now we somehow ended up talking about digital-distribuation and second hand sales

Also lets be honest here the only thing why second hand sales are such a big deal right now is because the industry missed an opportunity - again. Someone else picked up the idea and now they are kind of annoyed that someone else is also making money.

I will never get gaming industrie anyhow - they all cry about how bad sales are - yet they most of the time have a higher marketing than development budget and end up publishing inferior products.

Just look at COD i dont actually want to know how much money they made with it and the latest DLC yet they still barely invest more than other AAA publishers in their next game yet marketing has gone trough the roof ...

(This oviously doesnt apply to small developers - its pretty much like in the music business there are few artists that have way to much money while most others can barely live from their income)

Edited August 20, 2013 by SpaceHole

[Subcidal]

Ewwwwww

Noooooooo.

Don't you guys understand how console games work? You don't take what is basically a new genre of video game then instantly put it on a console so you can dumb it down as fast as possible.

[manskal]

Ewwwwww

Noooooooo.

Don't you guys understand how console games work? You don't take what is basically a new genre of video game then instantly put it on a console so you can dumb it down as fast as possible.

Well, to be fair con soles can have pretty complex games too. But I think KSP has a unique UI already designed with the pc in mind. Recreating and adapting that for consoles would take a lot of effort.

And I don't get why everything has to be on the tv or consoles nowadays. Damned kids! (I feel so old now:wink:)

Still, KSP for xbox? Not a smart move. If you point out 'but Minecraft?!' Well last time I checked best selling didn't mean best quality. Squad should just focus on pc and mac, for now.

[marach]

The game would be limited in play time but it would have let your friends and family play your games to try them out like the demos of today ONLY THEY ARE THE FULL GAME...

Actually according to an MS engineer it wasn't time limited, if they were on your account they had full access, as a bonus if they were part of your 9 "family" members they could access the game on their own account (with a 1 person at a time restriction). If they weren't in the "family" when you left they got a demo version of it to play and an option to buy the full game.

Seriously it sounded pretty good...