Out of curiosity mainly, anyone here published a game to a console?
Any advice about it prior to diving in?
Reactions to doing it? Smooth sailing? Total nightmare?
It’s been on my mind that I want to publish a game out to a console (ps3 probably, maybe wii), but I know there’s a high cost with the dev kits for the systems.
Just wanted to know some feedback from people doing it so I can be slightly better prepared before I dive in.
If, by any chance, you get a deal with Nintendo, read the certification guide. Read it over and over and over again. Commit it to memory. Do not stop reading it. If you have children, read it to them before bed.
The Xbox One and PS4 level of entry for indie developers will drop significantly when the consoles are released.
Nintendo has indie dev kits, that cost a few thousand $$.
I’d wait until these companies have released their new developer guidelines for their platforms, as everything has changed.
You can sign up for the ID@Xbox program, Playstation and Nintendo development kits, so that’s a place to start.
Consoles are not PCs. They are embedded systems with restricted memory. PS3 and XBox360 are also relatively old, so their GPUs are underpowered by modern PC standards. To get the best performance from them, you will need to know and understand deeply their slightly strange CPU formats and design your game accordingly. And, as has been mentioned, you have rules imposed about how the game has to behave when controllers are added/removed/etc. It’s not a total nightmare, but it’s certainly not trivial.
Make your game for PC first, then it should be easy enough* nowadays to talk to one of the indie men and have your game on there platforms.
*I don’t have a published game on Wii-U or PS3/Vita but based on how the people from Nintendo and Sony talk now it seems like it would be.(I don’t know of the Indie person for Xbox)
Ah, thank you. I was assuming it, but I never really knew if I was founded or not. I figured Unity would bypass most of it at least, but I guess that’s not the case.
Should have thought about that. So an added barrier is the business aspect to allowing the game on the platform depending on possible financial success?
That’s how it used to be. With Xbox 360 and PS3, you would need to be an established studio with previously reasonably successful titles. (I’m not talking about the XBox live arcade/indie games etc, but a full on Xbox/PS3 release).
As I said, with the new era of consoles coming out, MS and Sony have embraced indies and are making that barrier to entry much lower. While not many people know what the acceptance criteria are as of yet, it will certainly be easier for indies to publish on these platforms.
There’s nothing that Unity can do to make your game fit in memory, or adjust your artwork to get the best from the console GPUs. 
I made an Xbox Live Indie Game called TrickyTreat for the Xbox 360 console. It is on the marketplace found here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/TrickyTreat/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550c50
In the end it turned into a total nightmare. At first it started okay spending $106 Canadian dollars for the XNA club membership and developing the game. The programming language was C# so I was lucky there since I can script in C# in Unity ! If you want the full story about it this other post I made on this page explains it in more details: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/183075-MS-Next-Xbox-reveal-live-stream-thoughts/page6 ( my post is the 12th counting from the topdownwards )
In summary: if you do decide to go to the XBLIG area on the Xbox 360 console just remember that Microsoft does not operate it and is just all governed by MVPs that are rule breakers breaking the Microsoft TOS agreements there. Microsoft told me on the phone that I could start again with a new account but why would I since they would just do it all over again and I would be out of another $106 for the new membership! The XBLIG section is not run by Microsoft ! It is run by MVPs ! Now you know ! Good luck if you go there though. Maybe you won’t get banned but maybe you will after you join. If they do ban you, Microsoft can’t and will not do anything about it. Also, Microsoft is keeping my game and is still making money from it ! I told them they can keep the game if they wanted to so they did. I didn’t get any and won’t get any money for making that game but at least the game I made is there !
Unity for consoles was not tens of thousands of dollars?
you might be better off Developing for Ouya
I recently published my game Fallen World to OUYA, Razer Forge TV | RZ16-0128x Support & FAQs although I am not the Developer of the Game, I am the Designer and Owner of the Game I think porting the game to OUYA was pretty smooth with Unity.
I think publishing to OUYA is a great way to get some experience publishing to a Console before heading over to the bigger Consoles. You may not make alot of money, but you’ll get some first hand entry level experience.
Do you know anything about contract support payments? Someone on Kickstarter said something about having to pay 20k just to develop for PS4 using Unity. I don’t really understand that.
I doubt it, with this whole big indie push from Sony and MS, they know that a 20k license is out of reach for most indie developers.
Read this on the Unity blog…
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/03/21/unity-coming-to-sony-consoles-this-year/
With key focus on this paragraph
Sony Computer Entertainment is really committed to making their platforms approachable to all kinds of developers, so this partnership is going to make a lot of sense for both companies… and a lot of sense for the Unity community! They’re really focused on bringing the most creative studios, with an emphasis on independent developers, on board their platforms and we are leading the charge to make development awesome for studios of all sizes.
Thanks, pal. It really worried me.