Xbox Officially Adds Support For A 'Modern, Powerful And Production Ready Game Engine'

Here's a cool little story we came across during the week! Xbox officially now supports another game engine in the form of something called Defold, which is a totally free engine that's described as "powerful", "lightweight" and "performant".

"Defold is a modern, powerful and production ready all-in-one game engine ecosystem for truly cross-platform game development with an incredibly small engine footprint."

The company behind Defold says that once a developer has signed up to become approved for Xbox console development via Microsoft, they can "sign in to the Xbox middleware page using an account associated with it, find Defold, and request access".

After that, Defold will provide many of the tools and documentation necessary to ship games on Xbox, along with access to Xbox-specific developer support.

"Xbox support is available from Defold 1.14.0, with platform-specific functionality and documentation provided free of charge to approved developers."

So, what can we expect from developers creating games through Defold? The answer is probably small 2D indies for the most part - games like Void Scrappers and Sector 781 are examples that have shipped on the Switch, for example.

In other words, don't expect anything too crazy, but that's not to say Defold isn't capable of some elaborate and hugely popular releases. It openly advertises that it's a "powerful" engine that can create 2D and 3D games, and one of the most successful examples is mobile title Family Island, which has over 50 million downloads on the Google Play Store.

That's not to mention the "Very Positive" reception Defold has received on Steam as well, where 86% of the 230 user reviews have been in favour of it.

Interesting stuff, then! We'll leave you with a closer look at the Defold engine in the video below, and you'll also find a review for the aformentioned Void Scrappers that apparently serves as a very impressive Vampire Survivors alternative.

What do you make of this? Tell us down in the comments section.