[April Fool] AGS announces partnership with Microsoft, Valve

[Pumaman]

AGS announces partnership with Microsoft, Valve

LONDON, ENGLAND; 1 Apr 2008 -- BigBlueCup Ltd [1], makers of the popular game creation tool Adventure Game Studio, today announce a partnership with Microsoft and Valve Software to bring adventure games to a wider audience.

This new deal will result in two major changes for the product. First, the Adventure Game Studio software will be re-branded as XNA Adventure Studio, and made part of Microsoft's XNA suite. The AGS Engine runtime will be rewritten in .NET, in order to provide a fully cross-platform experience allowing games to run on Windows-based PCs and the Xbox 360.

Second, in an unprecedented agreement with Valve Software, games produced with XNA Adventure Studio will be distributed on Valve's highly successful Steam platform for players running Windows. XBOX LIVE will allow players to download the games on the Xbox 360 [2]. These services will allow significant benefits for game developers, such as charging per play, user account tracking and allowing players to record their achievements [3].

"I am very excited about this opportunity to bring quality adventure games to a wider market. This is precisely the sort of deal that we are hoping to do more of over the next few years," said Buck Lamborghini, Sub-Vice President of Marketing at Valve Software.

"The time has come for the games industry to open its doors to all game creators, enabling profitable games to be shared with the world," said Jim Schnapps, corporate deputy vice president executive of Xbox LIVE at Microsoft. "Our goal is to drive a creative and social revolution in Windows-based games with the same transformative power that we've seen in digital music and video sharing."

"I'm absolutely delighted with this deal" said Chris Jones, director of BigBlueCup Ltd. "I think that AGS had reached a point where I was no longer able to maintain it by myself, so having this corporate backing behind it will be fantastic," he added. "And of course, I have been well compensated. From now on, I will take a more hands-off approach, but still provide guidance to the new team in Bangalore who will be developing XNA Adventure Studio further."

Pricing and availability of XNA Adventure Studio has not yet been determined, but will be announced prior to the release of the product later this month.

For more details, see the XNA Adventure Studio website:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS:

[1] BigBlueCup Ltd is the limited company that owns the rights to Adventure Game Studio. Their website is http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk

[2] In order for a game to be distributed on the Steam and Xbox LIVE services, it will need to be approved as meeting a certain quality bar, in order to protect the reputation of these services. Developers will need to ensure their games are written at 1024x768 resolution with full motion video and an original fully-orchestrated soundtrack.

[3] Achievements are a way of players "ticking off" things that they have accomplished whilst playing games online. The proposed list of achievements for XNA Adventure Studio games includes:
Sideburns: Completed all Larry Vales games
BJ Delight: Completed all 6 Ben Jordan games
Low bar: Completed a game with Roger as the default sprite
Bad mix: Tried every single inventory object with every single object in a game
Old school: Played all games released before 2002
Bluecup: An object in one of your games turned into the bluecup
Limit Melt: Hit more than 3 of the engine limits
Wow: made a game that features 100+ rooms and 50+ characters
RPG Creator: made a game that features 1000+ rooms and 500+ characters

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

THAT explains it.

Got the fright of my life when I opened the AGS page, thought it had been replaced with something.

Ah well. It'll be sad to see CJ off the project, but hey, you deserve the break, CJ. I'm only worried that those new tech requirements will put people off - that's not exactly what AGS was meant for... but I guess we all move on...

On a sidenote, my offline achievements are:

Sideburns, BJ Delight, Low bar, Old school and Bluecup. I can't wait to get these all online!

[Domino]

Congrats. This should be cool.

Go hang out with Bill Gates.

[MRollins]

Sounds neat...

[nihilyst]

Cool for you, but ... will AGS 3.0 still be available for free?

[LimpingFish]

Awesome news. I'll definitely be on board with this.

Might get people complaining about the lack of Mac and Linux compatibility, though.

[m0ds]

This sounds awfully technical, and I'm not really a fan of change, but its okay, I planned to leave the community soon enough anyway. I guess this is the final whistle.

[Nikolas]

Yes, will AGS 3.0 be available for free? If not will the different parties be compensated for their hard work? Games under developement, will they be shut off, or asked for a set fee? Cause Mircosoft is the bastard we all know and, no accusing here, it's a company.

Then again XNA is not exactly pricey, in fact it's free (isn't it?)

Does this also mean that in due time we could see AGS games in XBox 360 please?

Anyways, enough with the questions. Congratulations CJ and AGS!

[Ryan Timothy B]

Well I guess it's good that I haven't built any more than 3 backgrounds for my game.  I guess I'll just lay low until this XNA software is released.  The 1024x768 seems a little excessive... Meh  I guess I'll spend this time to just learn how to animate better than I already was.  HD tv's need smooth and clean animations

[Ishmael]

Oh, seems like it's time I get a console too...

Always nice to see AGS progress, anyhow

[Vince Twelve]

Is it time to make this public now?  I suppose I'm allowed to talk about my game, then.

For the last three months, while this has been going through legal channels, a few games have been used for testing the process of porting AGS to XBOX 360.  What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed is on track to be the second AGS release on the XBOX Live Marketplace (after Princess Marian X).  The process is a bit of a headache, though.

Upscaling everything to 1024x768 was the first major challenge.  But it only cost around $12,000 in artists fees to cover that.  The real problem comes when the Microsoft Marketplace Approval Committee gets their hands on it.  They're supposed to make sure that all the games meet a certain level of quality, and suggested a number of changes.  For example, instead of the alien wearing a pink speedo, he's wearing a full suit of spartan armor ala Master Chief.  And instead of trying to solve puzzles, he's gunning down an army of aliens.  The two-games-at-a-time thing had to be cut out too, possibly for budget reasons and partially because the Approval Committee thought that it was "too different to be understood by the target market."  I'm sure that all their wise decisions will improve the game greatly.  I haven't actually seen the game since their internal team has been "correcting" it for the past couple months, but I'm sure the end result will be great.

Plus, I get a generous fraction of a percent of the sales.

[Charity]

I've got my fingers crossed for dynamic lens flare support.

Nice try.  <_<

EDIT: Really looking forward to the new Linus.  I felt that the 'first draft' lacked originality and I feel that these changes will present us with a fresh take on a frankly rather stale product.

[Nikolas]

Vince, please contact me for Linus music. This is news to me and I'm assuming that my music will be ported to XBox as well, right? In which case, since I own the copyrights, I should be in the deal, no?

Please contact me through PM, or e-mail. You know my e-mail.

[Reminder]

I don't believe it. Congratulations!!!  :o

Modify:

What the hell!!! 

[Vince Twelve]

Vince, please contact me for Linus music. This is news to me and I'm assuming that my music will be ported to XBox as well, right? In which case, since I own the copyrights, I should be in the deal, no?

Please contact me through PM, or e-mail. You know my e-mail.

Sorry Nik, actually, the Approval Committee also stripped out all the music and replaced it with the Halo soundtrack.  Apologies.

[auriond]

What?   No way! The XBox sucks! Why didn't you partner with Nintendo instead? This is gonna be a failure. I'm bailing out.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Vince, I have to say I'm severely disappointed... I've nothing against the new direction AGS is taking, but I mean... what you have done is practically sell the soul of your brilliant game. Didn't you even understand that with those changes Linus Bruckman is no more?

I hope you're happy with the money. You've disgraced indie developers everywhere.

[Gilbert]

 :'( When will we get the DOS support back?

I don't like M$ consoles, maybe I'll buy a PS3 and wait for it to have XNA support.

[brokenbutterfly]

What the... I see how it is! I definitely hate you, traitor  :'( I won't even waste my time ranting.

I hope you're happy with the money. You've disgraced indie developers everywhere.

Yeah exactly! Though I'm not addressing only Vince!

What?   No way! The XBox sucks! Why didn't you partner with Nintendo instead? This is gonna be a failure. I'm bailing out.

I second that! The Red Ring of Death is just pathetic 

[Vince Twelve]

I hope you're happy with the money. You've disgraced indie developers everywhere.

I'm sorry you feel that way Rui, but the Microsoft Marketplace Approval Committee assures me that the changes are for the better.  And I've realized that if I want to make games professionally, I need to make a few sacrifices.  If that makes me a sell-out then so be it.

I think that when you see my next game, "Resonance," or, as it's now called, "ReZonance XTreme," you'll see that the compromises have paid off.