Dear wittynickname,
I hope you read this. The answer to your question from this post is no time soon. Machinarium will not be coming to XBLA because Microsoft has rejected it.
Here is Amanita Design's founder and lead designer Jakub Dvorksy on why: “Microsoft just refused Machinarium for XBLA after a half year of talking with them. They like the game and know it would be very successful on their platform, but they don’t want to support games which aren’t Microsoft exclusives. Machinarium isn’t, since we’ve also released versions for Mac and Linux. We have another option to approach some big publisher to bring the game to XBLA, which is quite absurd to do and lose maybe a large part of revenue because of that.”
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If you are near anyone who works for Microsoft feel free to smack them upside the head even if they have nothing to do with XBLA at all.
Sincerely,
Matthew Razak
Machinarium refused for XBLA [XBLAFans, via Games On Net]
[Thanks, Ali D]
[Update: XBLAFans explained its reporting on the story, saying that "when asked about their plans to port Machinarium to different platforms Dvorsky confirmed having ‘talked’ with Microsoft. He did not specify if this involved being accepted for XBLA or being published by Microsoft on XBLA, but did put an emphasis on losing revenue through a conventional publishing deal."]
Matthew Razak is Destructoid's Associate editor and co-founder of film site
Flixist. He began as community member "cowzilla" and was since sequestered to write brainy features material. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife.
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Contest:
2:00 PM on 04.10.2010
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Why should Microsoft be the chump that has to support a company that's released the same product on another platform without having to resort to an outside publisher? Microsoft isn't a third-party publisher, they're a first-party developer. First-party devs that publish their own work typically don't publish another developer's work if it doesn't have the exclusivity that their own work has.
Sony and Nintendo do this typically, especially Sony.
inb4 already played it on pc... loved it
Not including emulators of course.
Oh well.
For example, let's say these guys decide to make it free on PC or Linux, that would take away from the investment they have made into it.
I don't see this as a jerk move from Microsoft, but a sign of how hard it can be to get a publisher to take a chance on indy games.
The real story is that Machinarium will need to find a publisher, as Microsoft won't publish non-exclusives, similar to how Sony and Nintendo won't publish anything that appears on other consoles. All they need to do is get a third-party to act as publisher, and they're set. Maybe they won't be getting as much as they hoped, but this is the reality of console publishing.
Its not that hard to understand.
>>Why so misleading? Microsoft refuses to PUBLISH IT.
You are aware of what "publishing" a game of XBLA means? There is NO retail copy, there is no investment other then the putting the damn thing online. You don't need a damn distributor/publisher.
This in fact, is the BS element of XBLA. For instance, you can self-publish on the Iphone/iPad (do you think all those 99 cent games has freakin' publisher?), you can even self-publish on the PSN:
In fact, exclusivity on the PSN means that Sony will pay for 50% of your development cost and you self-publish and keep all your IP:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/966/966813p1.html
Gotta love all the ignorance over this subject....MS isn't a charity. If you want them to publish your game rather than going to a 3rd party publisher, it only makes sense that you would have to give them exclusivity.
I'd prefer to buy this game on PSN anyway, so make it happen Sony!
If you read correctly, he says that they still COULD get it up on XBLA if they signed with a publisher, but they are greedy devs that don't want to do that because they would lose out on some profits.
BOO Amanita
Why the Fu** are you using a Riku *from the Kingdom Hearts series* avatar if you hate Sony?? Also, can you name a game that Sony has "rejected" because it was a 3rd-party game??
Also, Amanita are pretty dumb. Instead of getting smaller profits by letting somebody else publish, they're now getting NO profits, at least from a 360 version.
Not that I blame M. Razak though, it's being reported like this all over the web today.