InXile Entertainment has been firing on all cylinders in the past year or so, completing two highly successful crowd-funders in Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenara. As both the former readies for release on PC, CEO Brian Fargo spoke to the [a] list daily about how crowd-funding has changed over the past few months.
He also spoke about possibly developing for consoles after Wasteland 2’s release. “It’s been happening, and I’ve heard from Microsoft. I used to want to publish directly on the Xbox, and it was ‘OK, how many retail SKUs are you going to put out?’ I always felt there was there this huge disconnect. Why do I have to put products on a retail shelf in order to be on XBLA?” But the situation quickly changed for the better.
“You’re hearing Microsoft reaching out, they’re saying ‘Hey, we want you on the machine,’ they’re making the calls,” Fargo said. “You can use the hardware as a development kit, making it more accessible, because indies can’t afford to buy [development kits]. It used to be that if you shipped on Sony first you could never be on the Xbox. Now they’re like ‘Well, we’re flexible, maybe there are features…’ There’s a different dialog there.
“They’ve come full circle in a matter of ninety days, on every part of it, including the ability to be on the platform at all. Sony was already there; they go one step further with their Dev Pub fund, where they actually give developers money upon delivery of a game. You’re actually hearing executives at both those companies – and Nintendo, I should say – talk about why indies are important. Someone called it the Cambrian explosion of creativity, I love that phrase.”