Anyone made a FPS, ported to consoles

Hi there! Just a 2 cents. Has anyone made a FPS game and ported it to the consoles (PS4/XBOX 1 or Nintendo Switch)? How did it go, yourself or by a dedicated company/was it very costly/tedious long process, benefits/negatives, how did you go about the controls (like transfering of mouse/keyboard to that console gamepad - did it work or the feeling was lost)..I say this because I don't see many FPS games being made by solo/2-3 indie developers and that port them to big consoles. I see FPS games (as very demanding) only made by AAAs...currently, with Unity engine, there is Escape From Tarkov (albeit this is on the 'large indie' team scale not small indie), DUSK (made in Unity by one dev) but not found on big consoles, though he did port it to the Switch which is very impressive...Amid Evil, Ion of Fury, and of course the incredible Subnautica; this one is large indie/more like A/AA and was ported to consoles (selling 5 million copies between PC/XBOX 1/PS4). What's incredible is that PS5 and XBOX Series X are retrocompatible and these consoles will play XBOX1/PS4 games, only better. I feel there is sort of gap....with indies FPS games...and most FPS games in general...they exist less in consoles sphere (FPS games were much more popular on consoles in the late 1990s, ok many of them were PC ports to N64/Sega Saturn/CD/32x/PSX1 consoles; or actually, more the reverse, lots of these consoles games were ported - To PC instead). I think this is due to mainly being a 'mouse+keyboard' prejudice sort of/like it 'has' to have mouse+keyboard to 'work/flow' (mentally speaking because, left hand for walking (keyboard) and right hand (mouse) for 'viewing')...when I think certain FPS games were made Very well on console game pad (or same with the PC game pad...)...they made it work on the gamepad and it was decent (ok not as flowing/natural as mouse/keyboard combo...but those minijoysticks/analog sticks on the gamepad do well too; it's just a different feeling of mapping those mouse/keyb. controls on a gamepad).

I'm saying this because PC-only games are limiting (if only doing for PC) and taht is large swath of people you miss simply because restricting to PC players ...(of course if you can't go on consoles...it's normal...but if you can... I'm sure there is a ton of console players who would love to play a FPS game too...just think of Doom Eternal, Subnautica or Cyberpunk 2077 - all on PC/consoles; consoles need love too for FPS games) yet from same token I read that maybe the console players 'leave FPS games for PC sphere' and sort of don'T 'get in them'...like not their type of games (because no keyboard/mouse, harder to play on console gamepad); they play rather adventure/fighting games, sports/FortNite and mostly AAA games (their FPS is Call of Duty 5/BattleField 6/Rainbow 6)...not exactyl same thing as PC players (well they do play them too, but much more 'variety/types' of FPS games..like Firewatch a FPS game made in Unity)... I agree that Bright Memory (made in Unreal using RTX raytracing) by a solo dev is very impressive and shows the potential. I understand that console porting is very resource costly and time-demanding/plus hard with the whole certification (Sony said that, today, new games made/ported on PS4 Must work for PS5; as a requirement to get on the console). I have read that some indie devs released their game (in the last 2-3 years) on the PS or XBOX platform but that the console players just don't bother anymore with indie games on the big consoles/thus sales seem to not justify the porting unless your game Is Big/Unique and Will capture console player interest (while the only other big console,

Nintendo Switch seems to be holding (though that is due to it being a portable console (the 'as hand Portable device' greatly increased sales)...rather than a dedicated 'desktop' not-a-portable console like PSs/XBOXs; which are tantamount to special-architectured-PC computers in a different box)...but it too (Switch online store) is become crowded and new indie games losing (the interest) to new AAAs because just too many games coming out/ultra competition). I am thinking it's that if people are not impressed in the first 10 seconds, the game will struggle to capture interest no matter how much we (try) hook it to them (I mean speaking about FPS games only, not other types of games). There are so many FPS games that I think only a very unique/polished one can rise above the crop as indie-made (like DUSK for example), but also to reach farther and be on consoles too, not just PC. I also think that some people think that making a 3D FPS game (of high quality) is mostly for Unreal engine, not Unity more for pixel games/platformers/mobile....the reality is the number of these game made in Unity dwarfs the amount of other game genre/types (like FPS ones) made in Unity. While, the inverse is true for Unreal (where they have a huge amount of FPS games...albeit rarely any made by indies..only AAAs). But this one is (Bright Memory):

Thank you for viewing/reading.

 

Hi,
I've used an X Box controller in a couple of tutorial I've followed and an X Box controller works, no problem. I've not tried exporting the tutorials to any other platform, just been using the a windows 10 platform. The standard FPS script is already setup to use the movement controls from the X Box controller. Others you can easily add yourself.

A guy called Jimmy Vegas has a video on how set up an X Box controller on Unity which I followed. Basically it means adding entries to the Input Manager in Project Settings.
As far as the setting up of a hand-held game device, I don't know.
Hope this helps?
Regards,
Nick

 

For the most part, anyone who has access to a console for making games can't tell you anything in detail because it's all wrapped up behind NDAs.

The exception to this is that you can make UWP builds of games and deploy them to a retail Xbox One. So you can try this stuff out for yourself. I played around with that back when it was in preview and Unity basically does all of the hard stuff for you. The workflow is essentially the same as building for a phone.

There are still some things to keep in mind. First up you need to design your controls, UI, etc. so that they can look, work and feel nice with all of the relevant IO devices - PC monitor, TV, keyboard, mouse, gamepad... The same code can deploy to all of those platforms, but "functioning" is not the same as "designed well", and Unity can't automatically modify your design.

Another thing is performance. Current consoles are pretty schnazzy, but they're just a fraction of the power a modern PC has. For the most part on PC you can be pretty naive in the way you do things and it'll power through anyway. A console isn't going to do that, you need to have an ok idea of what's efficient and what isn't and how to get the most out of the hardware.

All of that said, the idea of "porting" isn't really relevant when you're using something like Unity. You're not making a game for one platform and then "converting" it to work on others after the fact. Unity already supports them all. You can do parallel development for all of your target platforms simultaneously, which is great if you've got the resources to sustain that. It means that you can fix issues as they arise, rather than having one good platform and a bunch of other ones where you modified tweaks or fixes in afterwards. But it does mean a much higher testing overhead during development, so there's pros and cons to both approaches.

 

Another thing to note...

You talk a bunch in your post about sales performance. Some of the other stuff you're saying suggests you're pretty new to this game development thing. My strongest advice is to not worry about commercialising your games until you're good at making them. When other people want to play your stuff then that's when you start thinking about charging for it. Until then it's far more important for you to practice, get better at your craft, and get feedback from players so that you can learn how to satisfy them (and/or break their expectations in interesting ways... but do that later).

My overused and beaten analogy: Do you want to pay to go to a concert to hear people who are still learning to play their instruments? No, you want to hear experienced musicians who are already good at playing. The same thing applies to video games.

 

If you want to release a game on console, then you need a devkit for that console. Here are links to get started:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/id
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/develop/
https://developer.nintendo.com/

Each console platform will require you to sign an NDA, so don't expect people to talk about the process.

Beyond the devkit, remember that you can easily develop your game to support game controllers in addition to keyboard and mouse. The best solution right now is the Rewired asset in the Unity asset store.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/rewired-21676

Build your game and test it on your desktop computer using a game controller. Once you are really satisfied with your game, show it to the console platforms and ask permission to release your game on their platforms. If your game is already really popular on Steam, the console platforms might allow it as well. Good luck.