Future Game Console Support?

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+7 votes

Hello everyone!

I have been pretty excited to start using Godot as my main engine of choice. I will be targeting mobile and desktop devices at first However I plan to port my 3D games to consoles. The Nintendo Switch (Formally called Nintendo NX) will be my focus console for the 3D fun multiplayer focused games I plan on creating. The game console is powered by a custom Nvidia Tegra chip. This chip supports DX12, OpenGL 4.5, OpenGL ES 3.1, and Vulkan as the graphics API.

I guess what i'm asking is when can we expect Godot to support game consoles or better support them so I can target the Nintendo Switch. I know once you register to become a Nintendo developer (It's free to do this now!) You can download the SDK and related tools for free. So with the SDK in hand could the developers of Godot allow the option to port the game to the new Nintendo platform? Even if Godot does this using only the OpenGL ES 3.1 as the supported API for console I would still welcome this very much!

in Engine by (21 points)

I know there has been efforts to port Godot to some consoles, but most console SDKs being not free they are not publicly available. But if what you say is true and C++ development is possible on the NSwitch, then that would be a great opportunity to support it :)

by (29,510 points)

Switch will use NVN as a graphics API. Are you sure it will support other APIs?

by (836 points)

1 Answer

+6 votes

Godot does support consoles to some extent. The problem is that porting to a console is not trivial, demands time and testing. Worse of all, licensing for consoles requires an NDA, so it's not possible to disclose the source for those, Godot can only handle it to licensed developers. The devs would also need to own devkits for the consoles to keep testing, and those are not free (you usually can loan then for free, but for maintenance the devs would have to keep it for a longer time than a loan permits).

With those caveats, it's not worth for a FLOSS engine to keep maintaining code for consoles.

Now, if you want to make a port for Nintendo Switch yourself, I'm sure the devs can help you out and answer your questions if you ask in the IRC channel (#godotengine-devel at freenode).

You probably will want to wait for (or work alongside the current development of) the new renderer for 3.0 which will support OpenGL ES 3.0 with much more modern techniques than Godot 2.

by (800 points)

This is some thing that I was wondering about too. Form what I know the Switch is meant to be using Unity.

by (29 points)
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