Psychonauts on Steam

[oubliette]

Someone from Just Add Water (developers of the pc/ps3 Oddworld ports) made this rather interesting statement on Neogaf (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=476998&page=2) recently:

Actually that's not true. we didn't MAKE the 360 version, we went through the various approval processes with MGS AT THEIR REQUEST for the title...

Then one by one they kept rejecting us...

First time:

"We don't think this title would suit the 360 Platform as it was already released on the XBox"

That confused as, since other titles had been released on 360 from older generations.

Second time:

"You need adhere to the following items before you can publish on GoD"

1. Must have Achievements (Ok so not a problem)

2. You must update the art (Again, not a problem we're doing that)

3. You must sell for no LESS than $20 equivalent in MS points. (That's a problem as our PSN price is $15).

4. You need to have sold more than 1m units at retail on Xbox (That's a problem as Stranger sold around 500k)

Third time:

1. We required a simultaneous releases with "other platforms" (We'd been talking to them for 15 months at this point with NO movement)

2. The original title must have a metacritic of over 80 (PS3 = 82, Xbox = 88, no problem)

3. You must have sold over 1m at retail (as above)

So we've tried our damnedest to get Stranger HD out on the 360, we even tried to get Munch HD on their and they were even LESS inclined

So we're talking to some 3rd party publishers to see if we can use one of their XBLA slots, so it's done final yet, and we ARE trying...

As for self-publishing it, MS have a rule that you MUST have self-published 2 titles at retail FIRST before being allowed to have XBLA slots.

So we've tried like crazy!

:-/

Stewart Gilray

CEO - JAW

COO - OWI

Seems like you have to jump through some crazy hoops to get games on XBLA, I'm guessing these 'goals' seem to vary developer to developer though which seems ridiculously unfair!

[Thrik]

What a load of crap. MS should be ashamed of itself for letting this kind of thing happen.

[oubliette]

Actually, looking at that statement again, it seems he's referring to Games on Demand rather than XBLA.

I guess some of the criteria are shared though.

[Twig]

But he also refers to XBLA, at least in reference to self-publishing. And why would Games on Demand have art requirements? Isn't that just supposed to be a straight up port, like Psychonauts was? (I think I even bought Psychonauts at the time. And it had a terrible graphics glitch where Raz had no texture after like five minutes of playing!)

Anyway, that's some whacked shit. Why the need for a sales requirement? I mean, I can understand if a game sold like two copies then yeah it's probably not worth releasing. But 500k seems like a worthy enough number to justify a rerelease that is basically free money for MS anyway since they're not doing any of the goddamn work THIS IS WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT DIGITAL DELIVERY PLATFORM OWNERS. Aside from distribution, what the fuck do they do? The approval process and... what else? Sure, there has to be some sort of quality control. Otherwise you end up with a shitfest like the Apple App Store. BUT COME ON.

Well okay that was a little more angry than I intended.

Also I don't even really care since I will never own a 360 again, and probably the same goes for whatever next console they release. Maybe though since I'll likely have a job by that time I'll break down. Maybe.

[ThunderPeel2001]

It makes sense that only GoD games should have a sales requirement. It sounds like this guy is getting confused, or has done a both job explaining what he meant, or both.

[vimes]

This is probably unfair but I'm not inclined to listen to Just Add Water complain about the requirements of Xbox Live and the tediousness of their validation process given the deeply broken and incomplete versions of Stranger's Wrath and Munch Odyssey they released on PC and how long it took for them to assess the game-breaker issues that remained there for a few iterations. Some of them remain unfixed.

Edited June 11, 2012 by vimes

[Twig]

This is probably unfair but I'm not inclined to listen to Just Add Water complain about the requirements of Xbox Live and the tediousness of their validation process given the deeply broken and incomplete versions of Stranger's Wrath and Munch Odyssey they released on PC and how long it took for them to assess the game-breaker issues that remained there for a few iterations. Some of them remain unfixed.

Yeah that's bad.

But it's not like Just Add Water is the only dev to ever complain about XBLA's weird shit. Maybe.

[Nachimir]

JAW are working for Oddworld Inhabitants, they don't (or at least I doubt they) own the games. It may have been that there simply wasn't the budget to address that stuff, rather than a lack of will.