Hi. Its not long until my development crew is established into a registered company... I was just wondering how can I become a licensed developer links and what not is also much appreciated.
Thanks for all contributions!

If you want to do XBLA you can email arcade@microsoft.com and they'll decide if your team is experienced enough or has a good enough game to get a license.

To do 360/PS3 native development it's a much bigger hurdle (something along the lines of 5+ AAA published titles average per person on the team, devkits are about $10,000 each and your company needs solid funding or whatever). They decide if you get to be a developer not the other way around. Someone at the above email might be able to connect you with the appropriate internal licensing divison. However, it's a bit of a walled garden; more or less if you don't know who to contact then you probably aren't already qualified enough for them to think you're worth licensing to. Certainly not "fair" but that is the reality.

You can also just do XNA stuff on the hobby wing of 360 for free.

-me

Its no secret when I say im inexperienced,,, however, I have this unique idea (the next Halo) and will do EVERYTHING to make it happen.
Thanks for your advice. I will contact the email and see where things go from there.

BTW. What details should I include in the email?
Cheers!

Not to knock your dream, but many people have the idea for the next halo. Idea's are a dime a dozen, the best idea still fails without a good experienced development team. Singularity I thought was a great idea, but there were some bugs in it that ruined some of the experience (texture loading problems were quite common).

Idea's do not matter, you will hear it over and over again, your idea is no better than anyone elses idea for the next halo, its the implementation that is the hard part.

There is no way to get your hands on a dev machine and license for 360 or PS3 without showing you can implement. A large reason for the PS3 is because unless you've done professional game programming before (on consoles) or are a smart experienced programmer, you won't have any shot at programming things that will work well on the Cell. Microsoft and Sony own the rights to their developmental packages for those consoles and won't allow others to use them unless you can prove that it won't be a waste of their time.

[Edit]
What I am saying is get experience creating games. Understand the tradeoffs for certain hardware, get into the habit of documenting your ideas in a clear manner so they can be shown to others and help guide you through the game making process. By the time you get the experience we'll be looking at new consoles, so do not set yourself up that you NEED to get it on the 360 or PS3. Even some games now in development won't see the light of day until the next round of consoles.

Quote: Original post by ApexPredator
Its no secret when I say im inexperienced,,, however, I have this unique idea (the next Halo) and will do EVERYTHING to make it happen.

I think that's the right attitude and you should certianly poke around. Just keep in mind that big corporation see unique ideas all the time and all they care about is you meeting a set of criteria that they've pre-defined. So if their checklist says "you must have 5+ AAA shipped titles on average for this team and have at least 10million in funding" then you're simply not going to get a console license.

A great backup plan would be to create your title for the PC. Once it's fully flushed out, then you can shop around a fully functional and kickass game. That's exactly how the original Halo got picked up by Microsoft. Bungie was very far along on a PC version and showed it to MS; MS picked it up and made it a 360 exclusive.

-me

Quote: Original post by ApexPredator
Its no secret when I say im inexperienced,,, however, I have this unique idea (the next Halo) and will do EVERYTHING to make it happen.
Thanks for your advice. I will contact the email and see where things go from there.

BTW. What details should I include in the email?
Cheers!

Probably not going to happen...

But a good start would be to create a few levels of next gen AAA quality content(ie better than almost everything already out there) and find a way to get that content in the hands of whoever decides who to license.

The first part is the difficult problem.

I guess you can keep your funding levels more or less confidential.

Best bet is to just worry about PC to start with, when you have something impressive, then go after publishers/partners.

David

(Note, I dont have direct experience, but I have been on the edge of the game industry and worked with native devkits).

PS

Most of the people I met didnt have 5+ AAA titles(which would be like 10-20 years of experience, just on those titles, not counting B titles before that)... Although a lot of the organizations or partner organizations/publishers did.

[Edited by - dblack on October 28, 2010 2:02:41 PM]

Wow. You guys really know your stuff. And I really do thank all of you.
Infact, that is exactly what im going to do. Do some research and hit the PC market... If anything EVER happens or if I have any more questions. I know exactly where to come.

Gamedev.net = the best community in the world!

Quote: Original post by ApexPredator
Wow. You guys really know your stuff. And I really do thank all of you.
Infact, that is exactly what im going to do. Do some research and hit the PC market... If anything EVER happens or if I have any more questions. I know exactly where to come.

Gamedev.net = the best community in the world!

Arcade or PSN is the closest thing most indies go to. It's not a bad idea seeing how even Proffesionals have been able to exploit PSN or XBLA for some nice cash. Heck Battlefield 1943 is a PSN/XBLA only game and sold like hotcakes.

Though like other people said it's best to prove yourself on PC first. All companies started on PC in one way or another. Heck Microsoft and Sony still continue to make PC titles themselves. Solid concept on PC=good credintials

just found this link might be helpful for you when it comes to sony Licensing form

Quote: Original post by stone_ta
just found this link might be helpful for you when it comes to sony Licensing form

Thanks man, when I am an established company with the new CryEngine, I will most definately apply to that.