23 Jun
2004
23 Jun
'04
5:51 a.m.
Hi,
Doc Shipley <doc(a)mdrconsult.com> said;
There's another huge problem with game
development. A guy I work
with in AZ had a new game engine and story plot on the boards, had
tested it running in Linux, and were ready to port to mainstream
platforms. His group found that to gain access to what they needed to
run on XBox and/or Windows, they had to sign developer contracts that
would effectively prohibit sale of their game on any other platform, and
gave Microsoft considerable control over pricing, target market, and
even content and development of the game itself.
Michael told me that the only upside to the MS terms was that Sony's
terms were much *worse*.
My nephew tests games for Sony, and among other things games have to go
through months and months of testing by Sony to get the developer to reduce
the number of bugs down to a reasonable number before the developer is
allowed to sell it as a Playstation game. You can imagine how much that
all costs, Sony charge huge bucks for doing the testing!
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb(a)dial.pipex.com
The future was never like this!