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Magicka on consoles?

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unmerged(255073)

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Jan 26, 2011
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Alright, every time I see this question asked it is met with 3 responses.
1. Flaming of said questioner.(Not on this forum, but others)
2. Hopeful ignorance
3. A complete lack of response at all

Okay I suppose that last one doesnt fall under the category by definition, but you get my point.

To get to the chase, the question is "When will this be coming to Xbox Live Arcade?"

There is zero information on this at the moment. The last we heard was that you guys were looking to get it onto most other platforms as well, but then nothing after that. No projected release date (though I could understand why you wouldnt want to put another release date down), no information on if that plan is still in effect, no real comment on this at all. And oddly enough, no one seems to be asking this question on these forums at all.

I understand the devs are busy working on patching the PC version, and I really would love if the PC version was patched to be more stable before a console release, so that its met with better reception when/if it finally does come out on the XBLA. I think top priority should be to fix it up. But I would also love to know if an Xbox version is still being worked on.
I mean, its already configured for the Xbox Controller, and from what I understand it was built with XNA, which should ensure an easy transition to the console.(If what a few people have told me is correct)

Im just wondering if there is any new information to be had about a possible console release. I think this game looks wonderful, but my computer is a horribly outdated piece of garbage and couldnt run Magicka.

I mean, from what I can tell this game is like Castle Crashers, but 100x better in every way. Look how great Castle Crashers did on XBLA, and think about how great Magicka will be received!

I dont mean to bag on PC gaming when I say this(so please dont take it that way), but it seems to me that a game like this would sell much better as an XBLA title too. That being said, Im glad they did release it on PC. After all, the more the merrier!
 
So that you don't have solution 3), I will answer here, but can only offer solution 2)...

Simply put, we do not know. The game is programmed on XNA, which should make porting it to an xbox simple. But I know nothing of the details, and also know nothing of how the industry works.
 
I never had a console.

That said, it's true what you said (Stating the obvious though) that it would sell much better if it's spread across more platforms (XBLA like you mentioned, as an example). Another thing you weren't sure of was XNA. Yes, games made with recent XNA versions can be "ported" to XBox (360) very easily.

From what I can see, the controls would work pretty decently on an XBox (Or any console for that matter), with the exception of perhaps the 8 elements used (I suppose the devs won't assign each element to a different button, but then again there aren't a lot of other ways to make use of the extra buttons on the controller, 4 buttons at your right hand's thumb and 4 on the front of the controller)


Another "pro"/motivation for releasing it on the PC first and consoles later, is that Microsoft has certain quality requirements, of which Magicka would fail bad at, for XBox/XBLA. Thus patching things for the PC version, will make a console version much less buggy and a candidate for said platforms.


However, I cannot answer your very first question, I do not have the information either, but if they planned to release it for the XBLA, it would very likely be 1-2 weeks after they stop patching critical bugs for the PC - at the soonest.
 
I think they'd have to do more optimisation on the engine or actually tone down the graphics? I'm not sure exactly what PC set up the xbox360 is equivalent to, but I'm under the impression the GPU is inferior to an 8800 (which is the minimum requirement with the current engine.) I suppose consoles are usually driving a lower resolution display, so it might be able to cope with it unmodified.

I think it's safe to say this'll happen a few months down the track at the earliest, letting the bugs be thoroughly squashed on PC first.

For sure, the gameplay would work perfectly well on a console.
 
I've seen Magicka using up 1 GB of RAM, but that miiight be because of unattended memory leaks or because something went wrong.
Now, considering the fact that the XBox only offers 512 MB RAM total, where devs can't even use all of them (because of the XBox OS, stuff like the XBox profile service running at all times, etc.), there's gotta be a lot of work unitl Magicka can run on the hardware provided. And then I don't know what Microsoft has to say in all of this... at least for retail releases there's a long list of "stuff you have to include/fix in your game before you can release the game", where any failure ("there's a memory leak!", "The game crashes after running 24 hours without user input!",...) gets you a red card. Which means that you have to fix the problem, send in another version & money for a new review,...
I can totally understand if Paradox wants to fix the game on PC before trying to release it on any console ^^°


btw, Xenos? Shine the flashlights at them!
 
Syrion said:
Hm... the GPU might be on par with the minimum specs. The current Radeon series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R600) is based on the Xbox 360 GPU (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenos_(graphics_chip)).


Does anyone else get the tendency to yell "XENOS SCUM!" after reading the GPU-name? (Warhammer 40k referernce)
Click to expand...

Based on some of the same technology... But far, far, from being the same, the comparison doesn't hold up. The XBox360 chip most certainly wouldn't even come *close* to current generation cards. The question is, whether they come close enough to the '2 generations back' minimum spec. I think the answer is 'almost'.
 
news for consoles

Well I have to say I`m rellay jealous to everyone who have the possibilty to play this game right now, cause I dont have. I have no PC to play on.
But there is still hope I think. Somewhere I read a statement like "we try to bring this game where it belongs: in front of your couch"...sounds like a version for consoles.
So my question is: Is there any plan to drop Magicka on consoles (PSN/XBL) and if: do you already have an idea when it can be dropped? I know your pretty much busy fixing bugs for pc-version right now, but I guess many people would be pleasured if you might releasy the game asap for PS3/XBox :D
 
The game was mainly designed for Xbox. And will probably be released for xbox aswell.
 
I made a similar thread to this and the answer I got was along the lines of
They are working on it, but there is no information on when that will happen

Arrowhead is a small company. I think in an interview about Magicka a few months back on of the guys said they had something like 8 people(I may have misheard, the guy had an accent and my volume wasnt up that high when he said it)

Im assuming most of those people are concerned with patching the game right now, and apparently the process to get a game on XBL is really lengthy and complicated.

But Im with you buddy, Id love to see this come to XBLA.
 
Maybe you should enable the searching function. I would have found this thread and not open a new one ;-)
I think we will just have to wait :) But its better to have a bug-free version for PS3/XBLA than a bad version full of bugs.
Till now: good job Arrowhead!
 
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