Our friends at the Xbox Expansion Pass always look for the deep dives for interviews, and their latest sheds interesting lights on the industry. Dave Oshry, CEO of New Blood Games Interactive, joined the show to talk about AAA development, how working with Xbox can be a pain, and more. Check out the interview below, and use the handy timestamps to find specific points in the discussion.
AAA Development
“I’ve never understood how you can budget for a game that has to sell like 3 million copies to break even… that’s insane.”
“That’s not sustainable. That’s insane.”
Xbox / Console Development
“The Xbox stuff was always a pain… once you get into the Microsoft side, it’s very corporate backend. It’s not like Steam—you get into Xbox and it feels more like software development than game development.”
“There’s so much back and forth… things don’t work, you have to email someone, wait, try something else—it’s just a lot compared to PC where we can do everything ourselves.”
“On PC we can launch and patch things ourselves immediately. On console, everything has to go through certification and approval—it just slows everything down.”
Xbox Strategy
“It’s so funny how too little too late it is. Windows is installed on every computer in the world and they literally let Valve come in and build the most popular gaming platform in the world on their software… and they’re just standing there like, ‘what the hell is going on?’”
“Microsoft and Xbox had so much time… so much time to come up with a strategy… they have all the money in the world, all the talent in the world… and they’re just kind of floundering.”
“This is an Xbox” Discussion
“If they wanted that strategy to work, they had to stick with it long term… the idea that anything you buy works across all your devices makes sense, but it has to be clear and consistent for people.”
Platform Performance
“One week of sales on Steam is almost equal to months and years on consoles for us.”
Industry Perspective
“It’s just bookkeeping… it’s not art to them.”
“It’s an insane system… you get investment money, make a game that has to hit huge numbers, and hope to break even.”
Indie Development
“If a game sells 50 to 100 thousand copies, that’s a big hit for us.”
Studio Philosophy
“We hate money.”
Our thanks to the Xbox Expansion Pass and Luke Lohr for providing the info!
