Topic: Ubi Soft being bought out?

[KDR_11k]

Wasn't that the WHOLE FREAKING POINT of that "Freedom of design" talk?

[Pale]

Uhmm..i thought that wasn't aimed towards small indy people like ourselves but, meh.

I don't really think it will happen though.

[jasonditz]

Yeah, I doubt it'll be that small a scale, but it would be nice if, eg. Nintendo offered a hardware board and a DVD full of software that you could stick into the (presumably) similarly architectured Powermac for a few hundred bucks and be able to develop your own games. Something like what Sony did with their PS2 Linux kit, but without the restriction that you can only run the code on other PS2 Linux systems.  

[KDR_11k]

If it is any larger scale there's no point in it since those companies could already get SDKs for consoles before. Maybe they'd have trouble convincing Nintendo that they're an actual company until they've published a few games but hell, if Nintendo doesn't want them Sony or MS sure will!

[jasonditz]

That's the one thing Microsoft actually managed to do right, IMO. They're easily the most friendly to the small would-be third party developer. Nintendo's insanely tough to get a start in. They won't even generally talk to you unless you've already published something somewhere else.

It leaves you wondering, of course, how on earth they expect to attract new third parties. They're basically making everyone start development on a competitors system and hoping they'll jump over at a later date. Well, either that or reverse engineer their system and whip up something so good on your own that they can't ignore you anymore.