[wly_cdgr]

Yes. This is the main and only major thing that is holding Godot back from mass indie adoption. I would choose GMS2 or Unity over Godot for a 2D commercial indie project even though GML is worthless on a resume and Unity has all the Unity problems, because they build to all the consoles. Or Defold, since it is really nice and at least can target Switch. And I would choose Unreal or Unity or maybe even Cocos Creator (which recently added Switch support) for a 3D project for the same reason.

If you want mass adoption, you need to make it financially viable for commercial indies to use your engine, and good luck convincing those people if they know they need to hire a 3rd party company to port to consoles.

Since Godot can't really go the console route, though, they basically need to do the work of figuring out how their users can make enough money on just web, mobile, and/or desktop, and then articulate and successfully sell that solution to them. Steam Deck could help for sure, but it's a big ask

[TulliusCicero]

> Since Godot can't really go the console route

Wait, why not? I thought it was a deliberate choice on the devs' part not to prioritize native support for consoles, not something that's actually impossible (since obviously other third party engines do it).

[skneko]

As explained in [0]:

- To develop for consoles, one must be licensed as a company. As an open source project, Godot does not have such a legal figure.

- Console SDKs are secret and covered by non-disclosure agreements. Even if we could get access to them, we could not publish the platform-specific code under an open source license.

[0] https://github.com/godotengine/godot-docs/blob/master/tutori...

[TulliusCicero]

1. This doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm sure there's some legal-fu you could do here to have a 'company' that's the primary contributor to Godot. Wikipedia has a company of some sort, does it not? And Mozilla's a company.

2. So what? Yes, the console-specific stuff has to be kept secret, that sucks, but it's better than not having support for consoles at all. I'd rather have a closed-source module to port to consoles than having no official method whatsoever.

[thristian]

Is there a practical difference between "Godot does not target game consoles" versus "Godot does target game consoles, but we can't tell you where or how or help you in any way"?

[TulliusCicero]

That's not what we're discussing. From another comment:

> MonoGame gets around it by having core team members that grant access to private trees for approved developers. It's not open source, but it's available.

Not ideal, but better than the Godot status quo.

[esperent]

Yeah I feel like there are definitely ways around this, technically and legally.

However, it seems they are not compatible with the goals and philosophy of the Godot project. That is their choice to make and if you don't agree with it, then your needs don't match with Godot and you should choose a different project.

I can understand where Godot is coming from. Getting involved with the corporate world is a slippery and corrupting slope and before you know it you'll be partnering with ad and malware companies like Unity is doing. Ok maybe not, but it's still not a decision to take lightly and in a world where everyone is motivated by money it is refreshing to see some communities like Godot and Blender who are doing things their own way.

[eropple]

MonoGame gets around it by having core team members that grant access to private trees for approved developers. It's not open source, but it's available.

[Mikeb85]

It absolutely can. It's just not open sourced.