That’s a lot of cash money. I’m still a bit confused at how much of this money will go to the actual engine and how much of it will go to supporting W4 in general, such as allowing devs to publish Godot games for consoles.
That’s a lot of cash money. I’m still a bit confused at how much of this money will go to the actual engine and how much of it will go to supporting W4 in general, such as allowing devs to publish Godot games for consoles.
I would really prefer Godot just work on a plug-in that can support consoles rather than continuing down this path of hiring a company to do it for you. It’s labor intensive, costly, and if you don’t know how your game will sell, it’s a gamble to go for with Indie devs.
They will never be a serious contender with other engines without officially supporting consoles on some form.
This is exactly what some of funds raised in this round are for: https://w4games.com/2023/08/06/w4-games-unveils-w4-consoles-a-practical-console-porting-solution-for-game-developers/
Although it’s pretty unclear if this will be free or a paid service.
You already have to pay licensing fees to the console manufacturers for access to their dev kits. I don’t see it being that enticing to pay an additional fee ontop of that.
It will likely have to be paid. Someone has to sit there and go through paperwork to verify that you do indeed have a license or in the worst case intervene if the automated way fails. Then they approve access to the plugin.
It’s like this for every engine. You need to prove you have a license before you get access to the parts touching the console SDK.
Judging by the description here it will probably be paid towards W4 Games https://w4games.com/products/
But it should be one click to export after that, rather than hiring them to do the port for you
If the games could run on the console user’s paid for without permission from Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo, that would be what I’d most prefer. Consoles require proprietary software which is antithetical to the idea of an open source engine getting free contribution/feedback. Some people don’t want to do free work for overweight companies.
That is not really something that can be done on Godot’s part. The best bet right now is to support open platforms like the Steam Deck over walled gardens like Nintendo Switch and show that there is consumer interest.
Yeah but then how do you attract game developers to your engine?
It becomes a chicken and egg problem: consoles won’t support the engine unless there’s a demand for the games, developers won’t make the games unless there is support for consoles.
Baby steps. One dev here, one user there.
But what if we would rather have an engine that’s good?
Good for what? I’d argue software freedom aught to be your priority.
So why even bother with a game engine? Write your rending from scratch and it’s as free as you want.
Godot Engine creator explaining why everyone wins when the ecosystem is open - Godot as an Open Ecosystem – Juan Linietsky (GDC 2023).
I didn’t say I like it, but it’s the reality of console dev right now, and consoles are a huge part of market indie devs will miss out on without having that access, and they are already doing dev with limited funds and resources.