3 ms·

Godot can export to iOS/Android just fine, the consoles are an issue because their SDKs are behind an NDA. I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only h

by tapoxi 3y ago

Godot can export to iOS/Android just fine, the consoles are an issue because their SDKs are behind an NDA. I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers.

shadowgovt 3y ago
That's actually why. Tl;dr the console owners want the system to be a little bit legally and technically complicated because they only want to developers that have legal and technical competency making product for their consoles. The implosion of the home console ecosystem in the United States between Atari and Nintendo is widely understood to have been caused by Atari giving up or losing the capacity to regulate who made games for their console and the quality of those games. As a result, the need for consumers to exercise their own savviness in finding the good ones went up, but rather than rise to the challenge, consumers just threw up their hands and stopped buying Atari home consoles and the games that went with them. The lesson the whole industry learned is that they're selling a luxury product and they need to control quality to keep it a luxury product. Development ecosystems where anybody can write games of whatever quality are relegated to the home computer space, where the console providers (as console providers) are content to compete minimally.
- tapoxi 3y ago
  They can remove the NDA on the SDK but still require games to go through a strict quality control and approval process before allowing them to be sold. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    It's risky. Remember Tengen games on the old NES? Tengen chose not to play Nintendo's game, reverse engineered the protocol, and started manufacturing cartridges of their own games without Nintendo's consent. Nintendo tried several flavors of technological and legal obstacle to them doing this, but ultimately those failed. In the end, Nintendo combated the problem by establishing the Seal of Quality branding which, as a trademark essentially, was something they could legally control and choose who received it and who did not. That, coupled with a propaganda campaign hinting that off label electronics could set your Nintendo on fire, eventually added too much friction for Tengen to see profit in continuing this mode of operation. I had a conversation with an Xbox development producer back in the early aughts on this topic where I had the chance to ask why Microsoft cared if people cracked the console to turn it into a home system they controlled, given that consumers would almost certainly still feel more comfortable buying officially branded software from the official distributors. The answer was simple: Microsoft isn't concerned about the home user, they were still concerned about development houses making their own games outside of the Microsoft ecosystem control and, more importantly, developing peripherals and alternatives compatible with Microsoft software, up to and including clean room developed alternative versions of the Xbox itself sold by other companies. A generation of console is one big game of architecture cracking, which is one of the things that keeps console generations evolving: sit on one console architecture for too long, and everything about it from the legal protections to the technical competency required to reproduce the artifact will age out. To give up the NDA is to willingly let that clock spin much faster, and ultimately disintermediate the console manufacturer from the flow of money they need to continue making product and developing the next generation of console.
    - tapoxi 3y ago
      I mean I suppose, but the iPhone remains locked to the App Store despite the SDK being public. It might be easier to find an exploit chain to allow unsigned code to run, but those tend to be quickly patched if people want to play online.
    - muststopmyths 3y ago
      I think it's more inertia than anything else at this point. For example, the Xbox/Windows GDK allows you to basically target one codebase for both platforms (with minor differences). So developing an Xbox-competing console is a matter of shipping a GDK-compatible software platform. Maybe even using Proton on a linux-based console. But that's just on the software level of course. The entire ecosystem of a console is hard to replace. I would have said it's about preserving the price-point/entry-barrier of the devkits themselves, but they don't cost thousands of dollars as they used to either. So, I think they do the NDA because that's the way it's always been done.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Bad quality control is just one of the factors in the 1983 video game crash. PC games also became popular later and being able to freely install any game from any publisher you like hasn't killed the platform. The amount of crap on app stores and digital console stores still is quite high, even on the Switch store from 'quality minded' Nintendo which doesn't put a dent in sales. My guess is the other factors, most probably the early market saturation, panicking investors and competition from home computers have contributed a lot more to the crash.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    I believe it was mainly the technical limitations of the Atari 2600 console, which couldn't even run a decent version of Pac-Man. Instead they produced this blocky, flickering monstrosity: https://atarionline.org/atari-2600/pac-man https://atarionline.org/atari-2600/pac-man As arcade games improved, Atari console games began to look like garbage by comparison, even the high-profile games produced by Atari, like Pac-Man.
    - bzzzt 3y ago
      The flicker was not that bad on CRT TV's of the time (which had very long phosphor decay times). I still own a few 2600s and a lot of games including Pac Mac which is of course not the same as the arcade version but more of a simplified version requiring a bit of imagination. Which isn't surprising coming from a machine with 128 bytes of memory and no framebuffer ;) Those arcade games didn't improve by themselves though, you needed better hardware for better games. While Atari didn't do themselves a favour by trying to squeeze every penny from the 2600 they did build successors. But by then the economy tanked and the competition from Nintendo started.
pandaman 3y ago
> I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers. Two reasons: 1. It exposes you to patent trolls, which is fine if you have no money so they won't come after you or have too much money to bleed them dry in courts. 2. If you license third party IP (which had been the case for every console after, perhaps, Atari 2600) you are also bound by the agreement with the third party, which has its own reasons, generally related to the reason #1.

by tapoxi 3y ago

Godot can export to iOS/Android just fine, the consoles are an issue because their SDKs are behind an NDA. I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers.

shadowgovt 3y ago

That's actually why. Tl;dr the console owners want the system to be a little bit legally and technically complicated because they only want to developers that have legal and technical competency making product for their consoles. The implosion of the home console ecosystem in the United States between Atari and Nintendo is widely understood to have been caused by Atari giving up or losing the capacity to regulate who made games for their console and the quality of those games. As a result, the need for consumers to exercise their own savviness in finding the good ones went up, but rather than rise to the challenge, consumers just threw up their hands and stopped buying Atari home consoles and the games that went with them. The lesson the whole industry learned is that they're selling a luxury product and they need to control quality to keep it a luxury product. Development ecosystems where anybody can write games of whatever quality are relegated to the home computer space, where the console providers (as console providers) are content to compete minimally.

tapoxi 3y ago
They can remove the NDA on the SDK but still require games to go through a strict quality control and approval process before allowing them to be sold. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  It's risky. Remember Tengen games on the old NES? Tengen chose not to play Nintendo's game, reverse engineered the protocol, and started manufacturing cartridges of their own games without Nintendo's consent. Nintendo tried several flavors of technological and legal obstacle to them doing this, but ultimately those failed. In the end, Nintendo combated the problem by establishing the Seal of Quality branding which, as a trademark essentially, was something they could legally control and choose who received it and who did not. That, coupled with a propaganda campaign hinting that off label electronics could set your Nintendo on fire, eventually added too much friction for Tengen to see profit in continuing this mode of operation. I had a conversation with an Xbox development producer back in the early aughts on this topic where I had the chance to ask why Microsoft cared if people cracked the console to turn it into a home system they controlled, given that consumers would almost certainly still feel more comfortable buying officially branded software from the official distributors. The answer was simple: Microsoft isn't concerned about the home user, they were still concerned about development houses making their own games outside of the Microsoft ecosystem control and, more importantly, developing peripherals and alternatives compatible with Microsoft software, up to and including clean room developed alternative versions of the Xbox itself sold by other companies. A generation of console is one big game of architecture cracking, which is one of the things that keeps console generations evolving: sit on one console architecture for too long, and everything about it from the legal protections to the technical competency required to reproduce the artifact will age out. To give up the NDA is to willingly let that clock spin much faster, and ultimately disintermediate the console manufacturer from the flow of money they need to continue making product and developing the next generation of console.
  - tapoxi 3y ago
    I mean I suppose, but the iPhone remains locked to the App Store despite the SDK being public. It might be easier to find an exploit chain to allow unsigned code to run, but those tend to be quickly patched if people want to play online.
  - muststopmyths 3y ago
    I think it's more inertia than anything else at this point. For example, the Xbox/Windows GDK allows you to basically target one codebase for both platforms (with minor differences). So developing an Xbox-competing console is a matter of shipping a GDK-compatible software platform. Maybe even using Proton on a linux-based console. But that's just on the software level of course. The entire ecosystem of a console is hard to replace. I would have said it's about preserving the price-point/entry-barrier of the devkits themselves, but they don't cost thousands of dollars as they used to either. So, I think they do the NDA because that's the way it's always been done.
bzzzt 3y ago
Bad quality control is just one of the factors in the 1983 video game crash. PC games also became popular later and being able to freely install any game from any publisher you like hasn't killed the platform. The amount of crap on app stores and digital console stores still is quite high, even on the Switch store from 'quality minded' Nintendo which doesn't put a dent in sales. My guess is the other factors, most probably the early market saturation, panicking investors and competition from home computers have contributed a lot more to the crash.
- leereeves 3y ago
  I believe it was mainly the technical limitations of the Atari 2600 console, which couldn't even run a decent version of Pac-Man. Instead they produced this blocky, flickering monstrosity: https://atarionline.org/atari-2600/pac-man https://atarionline.org/atari-2600/pac-man As arcade games improved, Atari console games began to look like garbage by comparison, even the high-profile games produced by Atari, like Pac-Man.
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    The flicker was not that bad on CRT TV's of the time (which had very long phosphor decay times). I still own a few 2600s and a lot of games including Pac Mac which is of course not the same as the arcade version but more of a simplified version requiring a bit of imagination. Which isn't surprising coming from a machine with 128 bytes of memory and no framebuffer ;) Those arcade games didn't improve by themselves though, you needed better hardware for better games. While Atari didn't do themselves a favour by trying to squeeze every penny from the 2600 they did build successors. But by then the economy tanked and the competition from Nintendo started.

pandaman 3y ago

> I wonder why they still do that, seems like it only hamstrings developers. Two reasons: 1. It exposes you to patent trolls, which is fine if you have no money so they won't come after you or have too much money to bleed them dry in courts. 2. If you license third party IP (which had been the case for every console after, perhaps, Atari 2600) you are also bound by the agreement with the third party, which has its own reasons, generally related to the reason #1.