Great news, an indie developer called Crunching Koalas, based in Warsaw, Poland, has now been registered as at ID@Xbox developer. However, CK’s Tomasz Tomaszewski can’t certain if their games will appear on the Xbox One due to the parity clause, which was previously revealed by Nuclear Throne’s own developer, Vlambeer, last year.
To those who are not familiar with the clause, it stipulates that registered ID@Xbox developers must release their games on the Xbox One, either at the same time or before other platforms. The challenge that small indie developers face is having to work on more than one platform version of their game simultaneously. In Nuclear Throne’s case, as their game was already announced for the PS4 first, then they were able to get out of this clause. This “loop-hole” doesn’t apply to games or projects that have already been announced for other platforms.
CK have intended for their game MouseCraft to be released on PC and the PS Vita in May 2014, but are still awaiting a finalised agreement with Sony. MouseCraft is a fun puzzler, is a cross between Lemmings and Tertris. Starring a Crazy Cat Scientist, you have to guide three blind mice through their “relentless quest” to find tons of irresistibly delicious cheese.
However, CK now fears that Microsoft will not allow the sale of their game to be showed if the game appears on the PS Vita first. The team definitely have Xbox in mind, but are unsure of what extra features could be applied to the game. Tomaszeski have stated to OXM:
“As for the console’s unique features – I don’t see anything that can be used in MouseCraft, maybe besides integrating the game with Live features. Making the level sharing and cloud saves available through all Microsoft platforms – Windows 8, Xbox One and Windows Phone. We would really like to use SmartGlass, it sounds like an interesting concept, but at the moment we are not sure if it will make the game better.”
Tomaszeski also his thoughts on what he thought about the console itself:
“To be honest, I haven’t done anything with our Xbox dev kits, we received them just 3 days ago. Just launched them and played a little bit with the new Xbox. We’re using Unity 3d for all our games and the [Unity toolset] for Xbox One is still not available”
XBL GamerHub wishes the team the best of luck with their struggle but thank them for bring this issue alight to budding new developers and indie developer-wannabes. This is one of the many legal issues that indie developers have to face or encounter at one point in their career. ID@Xbox Program Director Chris Charla is asking and encouraging other developers to get in touch in regards to the day-one parity clause.
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