XGameStation interview

XGameStation

Andre LaMothe is well known within the game coding community. As author of
some of the definitive books on games programming, he has been widely read
by both the hobbyist coder and the seasoned professional. His latest project
is to take his experience in gaming hardware and software and roll it into
one product which can teach all aspects of game design; from low-level
hardware all the way up to level design. This project is the XGameStation
console.

Based around a single board design, the XGS will allow would-be coders to
learn how a video game console operates, to write software for it, and to
design hardware add-ons for it. The package comes with complete schematics
for the system as well as all required programming software and manuals. The
focus here is on learning - learning what makes the console work, what makes
a game work, and how to use the first to best effect to produce the second.

Introductions

The Classic Atari Joystick will be availble for the XGS.

I've written a dozen or so PC titles myself, mostly in C, but some in Blitz Basic. I've also spent far too much time writing games for the Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC micro and Amstrad CPC in Z80/6502/etc. assembler. On top of that lot, I've written some silly games for the Atari VCS system, but never got round to burning them to a cartridge. As you can imagine, the arrival of the XGameStation is a Big Thing for me. So I can understand, why he is so enthusiastic about the XGS:

It's just so much fun programming those old machines, and there are millions of people that don't know what they are missing.

I asked Andre what prompted him to invest time and money in a system, which is unlikely to compete in the mainstream console arena. A 16-bit console is no match for Sony’s PlayStation 2 or Microsoft’s Xbox.

This is really just like any of my books; however, I am taking it to the next level by adding in a piece of hardware or making it a kit. This is strictly for hobbyists to teach them how to design an embedded system like a game console. Moreover, when I wrote my first game dev book over a decade ago, the only reason I did it was out of frustration. I had been making games for years, but there were no books on it, so I thought, "heck I will write one!". Same thing here, there are millions of software engineers and game programmers that would love to learn hardware and how to build a computer system to make games, but no one has stepped up to the plate to deliver, so I am going to take this opportunity to have some fun, André LaMothe explains.

Supply and Demand

Given the history of previous console-launches and the fact that XGS is a US product, we Europeans naturally fear that a PAL version will not be available for a long time. But that's not going to happen:

I am planning a PAL version at the same time. The second the product goes on line you can get one. However, I know shipping is expensive, so we are going to make distribution deal with local European and Asian distributors to decrease end user shipping costs, he states.

Are you listening Nintendo?

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, I asked about sales volumes - specifically how many units he expected to shift.

I usually sell 50-70,000 books when I release a new one, so I figure there should be at least the same number of people that want to make a game console that want to program games. 50,000 would be nice, but I think 10,000 in worst case.

There’s no problem in getting a manufacturer lined up, though. The XGS is a pretty simple design, single board, couple pieces of plastic. Thus local PCB companies will build the board and stuff it. Assembly will be done at a similar shop. If sales go nuts then he expects to have them done in Mexico.

Down and Dirty with a soldering iron?

XGS Prototype-3 Routing

I pondered the alleged flexibility of the package. I've seen many platforms, over the years, which have promised the same kind of flexibility as the XGS, but none have pulled it off. The XGameStation comes with complete technical documentation of the console itself. The question is whether individuals will begin to develop their own hardware add-ons, and how widespread this will be.

I hope there will be lots of hardware add-ons. If all goes well, I think there will be hundreds of thousands of new hardware hackers. This is new and unique - something different - thus people can get excited about it. As an aside there are many new technologies in game dev like pixel-shaders, but the problem is that tomorrow there will always be something new, it's hard to keep up and invest. However, this is all new information for a lot of people and they will find themselves full of new ideas that they can implement, he says.

I mentioned that the central drive of the XGameStation appears to be learning. Given André LaMothe’s author-experience it would seem likely that his company planned to offer any online courses to back this up. However, that’s not the case:

Not at this time. I do books and I think they are the best medium. However, I am going to add some short home made "ghetto" videos with the kit, one for each chapter.

What about the competition?

The details on the XGS site seem too good to be true - the ability to work at a hardware level to squeeze every inch of power out of the console by providing a completely open API is something that mainstream console manufacturers should have been doing years ago. I asked if the developers expected Sony/MS/Nintendo to take note of this?

Maybe? What the result will be, who knows? was André LaMothe’s enigmatic reply.

Since the XGS is all about creating your own games, it would also be great if a mechanism were in place to allow individual developers to market their own games. For example one that made it possible for developers to sell their games online.

We are absolutely going to support that. In fact people can do whatever they want and at our site we will have a section for them to distribute free or sell their games, he assured us.

I wanted to explore the community aspect of the XGS and the closest comparison I could find was Blitz Basic (a limited language with a fast development time). Blitz has a very active (thriving, in fact) community, involving message boards with code snippets, help, and a fairly massive subroutine library. I asked Andre if he saw the XGS producing a similar community and if so, what part will the official XGS development team would play in it?

I actually have books out on both blitz ("maneesh sethi") and dark basic ("Jonathan Harbour"), so I am familiar with the products. The BASIC we are making isn't nearly as amazing, but it works. Its more like AppleSoft BASIC. It's fun. It lets you make games on the system. The next version of BASIC we make will be more powerful. But, remember the readers have to write the BASIC themselves! Or at least understand every line of code in ours, so I will only put things in the kit that I am going to teach, BASIC is one of them. Actually, I am only overseeing the design of the BASIC, my dark side apprentice Alex Varanese gets the joy of writing it. He is working on it right now :), he revealed.

Languages (of the programming type)

XGameStation

Hmm - we get to write our own implementation of BASIC? Does that mean we can write our own implementation of something else? Actually it will work like this: There will be a GNU tool chain for C, additionally ASM is supported and of course the built in BASIC. However, he also hopes that someone will do a port of Forth. He is absolutely thrilled about that language, but he’s not sure whether they have time to do it. The reason why he’d like Forth to be there, is that a lot of arcade games used to use it. Atari had a legendary Forth they used.

I had been thinking along those lines myself - I think a port of Forth to the platform may well be my first experiment with it. I understood that one possible outcome of the project is to create another run of talented games designers and programmers, similar to those that appeared in the wake of the home computer boom of the eighties. But what effect will the XGS will have on the games industry five years from now?

Hopefully the same all my books did to give people the tools to learn game dev. Hundreds of thousands or millions of people that can build game machines, who knows what they could come up with things I have never thought probably.

Names and Dates

At this point in the conversation our dear editor, Ventura, appeared in a blinding flash of white light and made muttering noises about the name of the console. "XGameStation?" he babbled. "XboxGAMEcubeplaySTATION?"

Ironically, Andre countered, if you know me I am very fast at my decision making. So I simply took the name of my old company "Xtreme Games" and in 2 secs called it the "Xtreme Games Station" then Alex said, "dude, that is too long?", I said, "XGameStation", and told him to make the graphics. Andre laughs Only later did I get emails from people over-analysing the name.

The XGameStation is expected to be shipping at the end of this year. In the meantime, http://www.xgamestation.com hosts a thriving community of would-be developers, all waiting for the launch.