Game Concept Denied
4/25/2019
Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't feel that Jet Fighter Neon is a good fit for the ID@Xbox program. That means we won't be getting access to the Xbox Developers Kit (XDK) and its associated code libraries. We're rather disappointed by this, but hey, C'est la vie
Just because we've been denied for the ID@Xbox program, doesn't mean we are going to just roll over and give up. No, we're slowly tredging forward through the muck, and braving the leeches to bring JFN to the XBox One anyways. Just means we'll have to build the game towards the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). I'm sure you are wondering what this means for you as a gamer. Well, there are some drawbacks, but there are also some benefits for you. So let's take a minute and go over those for a bit. First, lets tackle the negative stuff and get that out of the way. The biggest drawback for targeting the UWP platform instead of using XDK is that we will not have access to building in XBox Achievements into the game. We were really looking forward to playing around with that and coming up with some interesting achievements. Of course, we could still buid our own achievement system in the game, but we haven't made any decisions on that line of thinking. That's really about it for the negatives that you would notice as a player. Of course there are other negatives, but they really just affect us as the developer. So lets focus on the good stuff now. By targeting the UWP platform, we will be able to publish our game simultaneously upon Xbox One, PC, and Windows Phone. That would leave the only remaining platforms for us to release to would be iOS and Mac. Don't expect JFN to be published on all of those platforms at once. If we do support all those platforms, support will be added one platform at a time. We'd naturally start with the XBox One, as that's the system we've been targeting all along.