Would you like to see OGRE running officially on game consoles? Please Take Our Survey.
One of the things that we've skirted around over the years is
supporting OGRE on console systems. We know it can be done – an
unofficial XBox version has been available for some time (which we
neither promote or endorse since Microsoft doesn't like this kind of
thing), and a working OpenGL ES version on the PocketPC suggests that a
PSP version is possible. Of course, because of our advanced
material system it's really the next-gen consoles which OGRE is best
suited for, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.
The major problems are less technical and more logistical and
financial. One thing is for sure, if we were to do this it would have
to be for officially licensed console developers only; this is because
we want to stay legitimate and have no wish to incur bad favour with
the console manufacturers. The financial hurdles are obvious; devkits
are expensive, so there's no way this support could be free. The
licensing for the console versions would have to be different too to
allow static linking with console library code which is invariably
covered by NDAs, and the additional subclasses we'd have to write to
interface with the custom console libraries could not be open source.
This means that whilst OGRE would stay LGPL, we could offer alternative
licenses in parallel for the purpose of console development (or indeed
for those who wish to avoid the LGPL).
This is not an easy path by any stretch of the imagination; but that
doesn't mean it's impossible. Whether it is worth pursuing or not
depends on the level of serious demand out there. I'm not talking about
people who would like to do a bit of homebrew console development –
rather I'm talking about companies who may or may not already use OGRE
for PCs, and want to move into licensed console development. We would
have to raise money up-front to pay for the devkit(s), which if we
assume we can't get a deal from the manufacturers, will be expensive.
Unless there is a significant amount of commercial demand which will
make this investment worthwhile, this idea, no matter how exciting,
will be dead in the water.
So, with this in mind our first step is to run a survey. I'd really
appreciate it if you'd take a moment to go through it since the
responses really will shape our decisions for what we might attempt in 2006. If you know someone
who doesn't currently use OGRE who you think might be interested in
such an option, please pass this link onto them too.