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Not trying to advertise or anything, but Im really impressed, when you buy a 360 you get an X-Box Live Arcade cd (its really cool, you can download tonnes of free new multiplayer mini games every week from live for free), and on it was a game made by garage games (as many of you know, a popular programming company that uses the Torque Engine, they made Think Tanks as well). The games relatively simple, as its just a mini game, basically rolling a ball around a 3D environment, but the graphics are on par with the rest of 360's.

The game itself doesnt amaze me, Im just surprised and impressed that GG managed to get one of their creations on 360, its pretty cool.


On a side note.


Im starting to see a huge opening for indi developers for the 360. Pretty much everyones heard of/read about the recently released xbox programming kit for indis, and lots of people thought the claim "if you make something good, we'll buy it" was pretty much a 1 in a million chance, but from the mini games ive been seeing on this, and the fact that this Xbox Live Arcade thing will apparetly be turning into a huge mini game database, I can see a huge oppurtunity for indis here, the quality of the games on the CD arent that good at all, they have things like Bejewlled on there even, really simple stuff to make, not even 3D some of them.

Just nice to get some more hope from things like that now and then.

- RUC'

I believe Geometry Wars is on that disc, and it's the bees knees.

Yup Torque and GG are doing great for the 360, although still finishing Torque X (Torque on XNA) although they have already released it for their 2D engine, (which I'm sure Jeku has been playing with) but still are working on their 3D and shader engines and XNA.

Marble Ultra, not exactly a great game really.
Most of the Live Arcade games aren't anything specutacular yet, because over half are just ports.
(most of which are from the mid-80s)

a big problem for independant developers for 360 creation is the high-quality the games developed must be.
it's not like the PC where you can release and if there are bugs and glitches you can always fix them later... it's not that you can't release a patch but the certification process requires them to be practically bug-free from the get go.

What's more is in order for you to test on the 360 it requires you to have a special 360 while developing, this in-turn requires EACH concept to be written off by Microsoft. If they don't approve it, then you can't get the hardware. No Hardware = potencial certification issues.

The hardware also isn't cheap, or in abundant supply.
I mean it looks cool on the surface that something like this happened, but remember Garage Games aren't new to the "arcade" title market. All they did was port a game they released for the PC with their 360 middleware engine; in order to have created that engine they would've been using full development hardware (not just cheap reviewer kits) plus they get quite a bit from their middleware.

They do make far more than most indie middleware companies. Remember they've also had several retail released game that use their engine.

I'm far more impressed by Totemball tbh, as it was developed by an independant English developer as the only Live Video game available on live. More impressively by only 2 guys.

I think Marble ultra was a fun game, it has the elements that most good indie games have, I mean its not spectacular, but nevertheless it is a good and fun game, although I think Shelled is more addictive.