Torque for XBLA and XNA Community Games

So you want to make a game for Xbox 360. But where do you start?

Last week Microsoft announced that it would be opening up its XNA Community Games channel to hobbyist and independent developers who want to sell games through XboX Live. Not only that, but they announced that they would offer a base revenue share of up to 70% with XNA Community Developers. But what's the difference between XBLA and XNA Community Games? Should you use Torque X or Torque 360 to make your game? And how much is it going to cost to make a game?

With all the noise recently about indie games on the 360, it would be easy to get lost in the numbers and press-releases. GarageGames offers two engines that run on the Xbox 360, in addition to tools and starter kits that enhance the engines. Picking the right engine, and knowing all the prerequisites to use that engine, can be a little confusing. In this post I'll explain what you need to know if you're making a 360 game and provide you with several references for insight into the 360 downloadable market.


XNA Community Development with Torque X: Free to $379.95

If you want to build games for the 360 and you're a student, hobbyist, beginner or small studio with a less than $100K development budget (more on this later), Torque X is the right engine for you. Torque X is GarageGames' newest game engine, written specifically for the MS XNA framework and the Xbox 360. Originally released in 2007 as a 2d engine, Torque X was in development even before Microsoft revealed XNA at GameFest 2006. In February of 2008, we added 3D support to Torque X, and in the coming weeks GarageGames will release the powerful Torque X Builder 3D tool set.

Getting started with Torque X is very inexpensive. The engine binary is free, and the Torque X Builder tool is only $100. The source code included "Torque X Pro" is $150, and the optional "Torque X Platformer Starter Kit" is $29.95. If you want everything, the whole kit and kaboodle is $279.95, however, there's a whole lot you can do with just the Torque X Binary and Torque X Builder for $100.

That covers the GarageGames side of things. On the Microsoft side you'll need Visual Studio 2005 (Express is Free), MS XNA 2.0 (Free), and to deploy to Xbox 360 an MS Creators Club License which is $100/year. Note, Microsoft offers students 4-month Creators Club licenses through its "Dream Spark" program for free. XNA games can currently be shared and played on PC, then deployed to the Xbox 360 (but the end user has to link their PC to a 360 to run it on console). You can read more about the difference between XBLA and XNA Community games here.

Commercial Development for XBLA: $100,000 and up

WHOA! Big price jump Davey, what gives? Trust me when I say I was shocked to hear this figure too. One of the biggest factors to producing an Xbox 360 game from development to market is the cost of producing professional level content (art, objects, levels ect.) for games. Other factors are QA, dev kits, certification and localization costs, as well as your team's salaries. Jeff Tunnel did a great job of covering this about two years ago when he presented at GameFest '06 on developing Marble Blast Ultra for XBLA. He posted notes and comments on his talk in his Uber blog MakeitBigInGames.com I encourage you to read his blog in general and that post in particular if you are looking at making a XBLA game. Jeff's estimate of $100k-$300k per-title is consistent with the numbers posted on a recent Gamasutra article titled The State of Indie Games , which is also a fantastic read, with VERY good information on budgets and distribution options for Indies. Author, Juan Gril does a great job of supporting his article with links to external figures. For any studio looking to make a run at commercial game development on a downloadable channel this article is a MUST READ.

Technical Differences:

There are a number of technical differences between Torque X and our standard engines(TGB,TGE, TGEA) to consider as well. The most significant difference is that Torque X is written in C#, which is a managed code base. Our other products, including Torque 360, are written in C++. This difference means there is less control available to the developer for optimizations with Torque X but the engine code is generally more secure and beginner friendly. Torque X is also written within the XNA Framework meaning it is compatible with XNA out of the box. XNA is written for Microsoft specific platforms such as Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune, but it is not intended to be used with non-Microsoft platforms such as Mac, Linux, Playstation systems or the Wii. (To my knowledge there are some workarounds to get XNA game running on some of these systems, but they are not supported by Microsoft.)

There are also design differences between Torque X and Torque 360. Torque X features a component architecture which makes code use much easier than C++ Torque's inheritance model. The art pipeline for Torque X is based on polysoup which can load and render a broader variety of 3D model formats, than C++ Torque can, including .dts, .x, .fbx, and .xsi. Additionally, Torque 360 makes use of Torque's hallmark networking whereas Torque X relies on the networking that the XNA framework provides. Because of Torque X has an extremely flexible component architecture, it would be fairly easy to write and/or add a networking component to the engine for your game and adding Torque networking to Torque X is a feature addition we're strongly considering over the next few months.

Torque 360 Licensing Costs:

Traditionally game engines and middleware account for about 10-15% of a game's production budget. I am happy to report that Torque is well below this average. (Serious inquires can contact licensing@garagegames.com for details. OEM developer certification may be required to obtain a formal quote). While we are still the most affordable console engine on the market, there are a number of factors (dev kits, cert testing, localization etc.) that makes commercial console development a more expensive venture.

The good news is that Torque 360 is built from the same C++ code base as TGEA, so it is entirely possible to build the complete game on PC, use the PC build to shop for a publisher (or self-publish on PC), secure the funding needed to take a title onto XBLA, then use the same code with Torque 360 to ship the title. Note, too, that, Torque 360 has already been through the certification process and shipped multiple games on XBLA including Marble Blast Ultra, Penny Arcade Adventures, Rocketmen, and Screwjumper, plus several others still in development.

Bottom Line:

If you're a student, hobbyist, beginner or small studio, and just want to get a game up and running in the Community Games Store and maybe make a little money in the process; Torque X for XNA is the fastest path to market. If you're an established studio looking for a highly capable, multi-platform, battle-tested C++ engine; TGEA and Torque 360 offer a phenomenal value for your development dollars.

To find out more about Torque X Visit: www.garagegames.com/products/torque/x/
To find out more about XNA and selling games through the XNA Community visit: blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/07/22/introducing-xbox-live-community-games.aspx

Feature info for Torque Game Engine Advanced and Torque 360 is available here:www.garagegames.com/products/torque/tgea/

Thanks for reading!