New Braid Preview - "More Fun Than Calculus!"

Freelancer Chris Dahlen has gotten his hands on a near complete copy of the PC version of Braid, and has a lot of praise for it:

On one level - the one where I’ve made the least progress - you see a kind of branching effect. Say that you run from one end of the platform to the other, but as soon as you get there, you change your mind and rewind back to the start. After you rewind, you’re back at the beginning of the platform - but then a “ghost” version appears and retraces your last footsteps, while the present you can go off and do something else. Metaphorically, it’s like you’re watching two ways that your life could play out.

In fact, I guess it’s like Sliding Doors. The hard part is figuring out how to use this new ability to solve a series of jumping / lever / locked door puzzles, and how to picture yourself going in two separate directions at the same time - and that’s where this felt like calculus. Yes, I get the concept of calculating the slope at a specific point on a curve, but when I actually have to use it on a final exam problem, it makes a small spot on the left hemisphere of my brain go “groan.” That same flabby brain slice acts up when I play Braid.

Braid is really shaping up to hopefully be one of the breakout hits of the XBLA, hopefully we'll see more soon. Read all of the impressions below.

Source: Save The Robot - "Braid: More Fun Than Calculus!", thanks to Kotaku for bringing up the link.

Rumor: Microsoft cutting royalty fees for XBLA games?

This week was all about the democratising of Indie game development through the PC, PSN and XBLA. But according to Brian Crecente over at Kotaku, Microsoft may be getting a little greedy on the current XBLA royalty fees - claiming they may have as much as halved the previous amount given to developers.

For the last few years Microsoft had given XBLA developers a very generous royalty share of 70% - now sources are saying that may have gone down to somewhere near 35%.

Microsoft has responded to the allegations, which you can view here on Kotaku, however they neither confirm or deny the rumor.

If the rumors are true - it seems like an almost hostile move by Microsoft which could possibly push waves through the Indie community back to the PC, PSN or Wii. One of the main reasons XBLA is so popular is that it's actually one of the few ways to make some decent cash out there in the Indie scene - a scene where most games are made out there for no profits whatsoever, and a scene where games are - in general - never actually made to completion.

If such a sudden change has occurred, it may begin to turn people off using the XNA library. A game like The Dishwasher is already fairly far along in development - but what can a developer like this do now that they're already deep into the XNA structure? You can't go back - you're committed to the platform. You're stuck.

If this is true it could also mean that some games could go UP in price - a game like Bionic Commando Rearmed was made with a fairly large budget for an XBLA game - under the assumption that they would get most of those costs back with the generous royalties - now it might be too much of an effort to do this kind of project again.

Of course, this is all speculative, it might just purely be rumors, or not as severe as suggested - but even still it could be a blow to the XBLA initiative. At the same time, we don't know what sort of royalties are being pushed by Sony or Nintendo on their respective consoles either.

Kotaku will hopefully be following up on this as more information comes up.

Source: Kotaku - "Rumor Microsoft Cuts Indie Royalties in Half", Kotaku - "gdc08 Microsoft Responds to Royalties Cut Rumor"