xbox one and microsoft unity indie development kit details?

So I was reading a nice article on Microsoft's decision to change course on games developed for the Xbox one and allow indie games. id@xbox sounds like xbla (Xbox live arcade) except with a reworded name. Anyone have any opinions on when the indie game dev kit for xbox one will come out? I think Playstation 4 and Xbox One are both messing with consumers (anyone read the nice December game informer article comparing how as soon as Microsoft did something so did Sony?).
Major confusion for me.

 

It's going to be opened only to a select few developers initially to help craft the program. Afterwards we'll just have to see, but Microsoft has already stated that every xbox one will be a dev kit so there won't be a separate unit. The retail unit will be your sandbox.

 

Unless you are a licensed indie dev under Id@Xbox you won't. Not sure how to sign up, but don't care for myself at the moment (not ready). Though all Xbox units everywhere will be available as dev kits in hopefully the near future. As far as I know, they have yet to release more details. My bet it's you won't see any info till early next year through possibly E3. Eventually you won't need a development kit, and everyone can develop games who has an engine with access to it. I'm certain unity will jump on board.

 

I'm with Moxie... I took Unity's partnership with Microsoft around WinRT as a positive sign that Microsoft will welcome them to the XboxOne fold as well. What's left to be seen though is whether that will be the full xbox experience or whether it will be an RT-like experience with games that run on the "apps" side of the console rather than the full gaming side. Remember that it will have two OSs running on a hypervisor, one of which is the XB1 game OS and the other is an RTish OS (likely based on the same Kernel and architecture since the processors are now x86) that will run the apps.

 

I believe it will be full. From what I recall, I heard all games under this new dev movement will be included in the fray with AAA games. No more indie only section. I believe it came from one of the earlier IGN articles. I'll see of I can spot a link to it.

 

http://www.examiner.com/article/xbox-s-vp-marc-whitten-confirms-xbox-one-self-publishing

This isn't the exact one. But it does state everyone will have every option available, such as achievements, cloud services, and equal or great discoverability.

 

Thanks for the link! Reading another recent article, Kinect will finally be available to indies as well.

 

The last one is a problem for all but the most basic of games, considering the windows app store regulations on things like the following:

There's a lot more, but some of these lead to some really awkward issues and design compromises just so you can be on the app store, which is already an awkward place to put things considering the general market.

 

How are any of those clauses an issue? They all seem to be things I'd plan on doing anyway. Mind you, I make my games to support as many platforms as I can at once, so they're all kind of default for me.

 

If you're not going to be targeting a mobile device, adding touch support is useless and time consuming, same with the ridiculous 1024x768 requirement. For that touch support, you have to adhere to microsoft's touch guidelines, which add another layer of testing. Launching and suspending in 5 and 2 seconds respectively is another mess if you're working on a larger game.

These are all pretty big factors if you have no intention of ever targeting mobile and are using this as a launching point to get on to the Xbone, a system that doesn't even support non-widescreen resolutions or touch input.

 

For sure. It's also a price we pay for not having our game sitting amongst the shovelware (though I'm sure there'll still be plenty of that, so maybe I should say less shovelware).

This also seems far and away less strict than QA for previous consoles.

I can see why you'd want to avoid adding touch support if you didn't plan on supporting touch devices at all, but the resolution and startup/suspend times don't ring any alarms to me.

 

I spoke to Unity Corporate earlier this year, re: Xbox licensing. Here is a excerpt of the response I received:

"Our Business Development Directors specifically look after console licenses. I would be more than happy to make the introduction but just to give you an idea of the costs. It would come to $40,000 per title for an Xbox license. If you would like to engage in further talks I would be more than happy to make the introduction."

Ouch.

 

This makes me question what exactly is M$ definition of every console is a dev kit. Do they mean something like Minecraft or the now defunct Atmosphir where it is a controlled building environment with a Store of sorts for Objects. This does not sound indie by any stretch of the word. 40K...There's so much not known at this point, however we'll find out.

If both Microsoft and Sony are prohibitive then I'll just stay away from consoles.

 

Was this about Xbox360 or One? And reference to Unitys license or Microsoft's? Maybe that will clarify things. Couldn't see it being that way for such an "open" platform come next year or whenever it is.

 

That $40k devoid of any context doesn't really tell us anything. Depending on when it was "earlier this year" I expect it was actually referring to Xbox 360 licensing. Either way, though, MS saying that every box is planned to also be a dev kit (note: planned, it's not there yet) is not the same thing as Unity supporting it as a target platform.

 

The ideal scenario would be if Microsoft and Unity worked out a deal where there was a Unity Xbox One Pro license with similar pricing as the iOS Pro and Android Pro licenses (or perhaps free if you have the core Unity Pro?). After all, indies need all the help they can get, and using a game engine makes sense for most. So it'd be weird and unfortunate if using Unity was out of reach for of 99% of indies on Xbox One.

 

This should have been for Xbox360 and it would have only been part of the cost as you also need the XDK.

 

It's a bit late, my apologies, I wasn't watching this thread. $40k was the cost you had to pay to Unity Corp for a Xbox 360 license.

It's all good now, for those of you who are looking at the xbox one, this link will help:

Independent Developers Publishing Program for Xbox One.

Many of you would have heard the news about Unity/Microsoft's deal. Hats off! We might have to wait a little bit before the tools are available. In order to get access to the tools, you will have to join id@xbox. It's free and the Unity tools will (apparently) be available in the coming weeks. It's supposed to be a special variant of Unity Pro, which targets the Xbox only. With any luck, the xbox 360 will be one of those targets, but I wouldn't get your hopes up.

@angrypenguin: As for my previous post being devoid of context, rtfm if you are really interested. I did. You didn't.

 

... huh?

 

I'm the program, and I'm awaiting a dev kit. I'm not allowed to say much really, but the only thing that is allowed to be said is you get two dev kits for free, but you need to either have previously worked or developed something they deem good enough to give your a dev kit, or be working on something that looks good. We receive updates all the time regarding updates and such. I'm not sure how public the entire Unity side of it is, but we've been told it's in Alpha. Anything more I say would be breaking the rules.

 

I just want the new kinect...wonder when the pc version will be out........

 

Is this applicable right now, too? Any idea of what the price might be for "unity xbox one"? If you will break NDA or something else to answer the question, I will just simply set a range. Is it over $5000? or over $10,000?

 

Thats sweet! I will give it a try after some google play hit

I assume once accepted, it is not per title?(like cryengine) Meaning I can export to xb1, as much title as I want. Only those titles need certification(verification, for store quality control) before being live on store. Isn't it?

 

Well I'd assume that if your first title is a success they'd be more than willing to carry on with some kind of similar arrangement, since doing so would almost certainly be mutually beneficial.