Homebrew: The Barriers and Predictions

Over at The Pensive Gamer I've put the final article up that discusses the coming of mass market homebrew. It looks at the past by discussing the barriers and looks to the future by looking at where each console might be going. Full article below:

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Over the past few weeks I've explored the mass market homebrew options on the Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360. Today I finalize the 'Here Comes Homebrew' series by looking at what was preventing mass market homebrew and, for everyone's amusement, sticking my neck out with a few predications; appropriate on the eve of GDC.

What were the Barriers?
Four inter-related things: complexity, support, distribution and publishers.

Complexity
Console development is typically a complex undertaking. While Nintendo is historically credited with providing better tools than Sony, Microsoft and the Web changed things. Microsoft was built on the idea of providing tools to ease development and XNA lowers console development complexity to a new level.

As for the Web, its success was driven by the notion that anyone could bring their ideas to the world. Web development is more complex than envisioned in the early web days, but it is much less complex and more broadly reaching than traditional console development.

Support
Support needs cannot be understated. Not only are good tools needed, but so is good documentation and strong developer communities. This has been a strength of Microsoft's, from their developer website, MSDN, to Microsoft developer blogs, to communities built around Microsoft technology. The web is no different. Numerous companies provide free and commercial tools and there are plenty of communities built around Flash, JavaScript and HTML development.

Distribution
Until Xbox Live Arcade publishers owned the primary game distribution channel, retailers. With all consoles equipped with Internet connections and download services, along with two providing web browsers, getting homebrew to the console directly is no longer an issue.

Publishers
This one is not yet solved. It is easy to argue homebrew development isn’t competition for publishers but the consumer's time at the controller is likely a publisher concern. Particularly if homebrew games are free and publishers having rising development costs.

Microsoft Xbox 360
First off let's be clear, the $99 US annual fee for the XNA Creators Club isn't about Microsoft making money from the subscription. The number of people paying won't cover the engineering cost that has gone into creating and supporting XNA any time soon.

Requiring a fee and needing to provide source is about not drawing the ire of publishers and acting as a form of minimal quality control; only those serious enough to spend money will tend to create something. Microsoft is testing the waters while they complete full development and finalize their strategy.

So my predictions for Microsoft? I expect expanded APIs for Live support, including multiplayer, lobbies, etc. I do think they will eventually add VB.NET as a language choice, but they might wait to see some success first.

Microsoft will expand the Dashboard UI in a coming update. This will allow people to browse, play and rank homebrew games. Some form of both automatic and manual filtering mechanism will be put in place to minimize garbage, malicious and inappropriate homebrew applications.

While I don't believe they will remove the paid subscription for developing 360 homebrew apps, playing them will be free or require a Gold subscription. Publishers shouldn't view this as competition but as a way to find rough gems to turn into full titles. As a case in point, Sony took the free Flash game flOw and released it last week as a downloadable game.

Nintendo Wii
With the only current legitimate homebrew avenue being web, the question becomes what can Nintendo do to enhance it? They have already provided a strong browser. Providing some level of web API doesn't make sense when there really isn't the notion of a single sign-in/user focused central service nor the same kind of game completion tracking/achievements as on the 360.

They could offer extended support in JavaScript or Flash for mapping all aspects of the controller input, or offer application and game style guides including simple JavaScript/HTML/CSS templates. I don't believe this is high on their list and ultimately I don't think it matters. I really see the Wii community, not Nintendo, as the ones to carry Wii web homebrew along.

As for attracting native developers to the platform, a dev kit costs just under $2000 is well beyond homebrew developers. I think Nintendo is a bit taken back by their success and just trying to manage it. Demand by studios for dev kits even appears to be impacting Nintendo's ability to support indie developers, amateur support is likely an even lower priority. Ultimately, I don't see Nintendo sanctioned homebrew happening any time soon.

Sony PlayStation 3
While on the surface Sony has the most homebrew options, the options aren't viable as is. PS3's web browsers is apparently much weaker than Wii's and an installable OS is too complex. To compete at homebrew Sony has to bring changes.

While I can see Sony making updates to their browser, particularly as Nintendo gains attention with its browser, but just like Nintendo I don't expect Sony to create web APIs.

On the native homebrew side, Sony's Phil Harrison does have a keynote speech at next week's GDC that is meant to address 'Game Development 3.0'.

My primary guess is that it isn't homebrew, but instead APIs, store integration and maybe web support that game developers can use to allow user contributed content. While this will include game-specific scripts such as Unreal Tournament mods, this isn't true homebrew. Sony would need to officially provide tools and ideally allow mods without requiring the purchase of a game.

There are other options such as expanding upon IBM's Eclipse-based Cell SDK or porting Java with extensions just for the PS3. The former will definitely be more complex than XNA and harder to support. A Java port will be close to XNA's complexity, have benefits similar to XNA and even have a world wide developer community. I think both of these options are in the realm of possibility if Sony wanted to, but less likely than my primary guess. I anxiously await Sony's GDC announcements.

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