Yet they managed to do it after getting their rights back, you cannot exclude the example that pokes a hole in your statement, they're not console dev's either. But they managed. In fact this example is worse on tfp, they already have the game ported and are unable to support it. Stranded deep had to start from scratch and "spend millions" to port it to consoles after paying to get their own rights back.
I believe you're missing the point. This is not an example that pokes a hole in my statement, as the two are nothing alike. A PC developer allowing publishing rights to be held by another company who hired a third party team to create a console version of their PC game as they are not console developers, and then said publisher going bankrupt and forcing them to re-buy the rights is not the same thing as a game that was never on console, deciding that after their publisher folded who was promising to pay them, to make a console port of their game for a huge payday. The game wasn't released on console, and thus they hadn't made any money off of it yet from the masses. It seems according to Google it was still in the deal making phases when Telltale folded. So if anything he came out of that arrangement richer, as Telltale was probably negotiating price points and paying for work beforehand. Clearly the company was not strictly a PC only dev, either. Otherwise they wouldn't have been able to port it to console themselves. There's just no way. It also appears that it's not just one man, but a team from around the world who comprise the company. Even from the start it was co-founded by two people working together, one of which has a very wide range of skills. He knows every major coding language and knows how to work with PS4, Xbox, Linux, Mac, and Windows. (It's obvious why he's the lead programmer, if you push aside the fact he co-founded the company with Ben Massey. ) Their team looks to be around the size of TFP atm.
To give you an idea. A windows 10 user, make me a Linux technician, it does not. (I can't even open files on that bloody thing, lol) Knowing how to create a C# Unity game for Windows 10, doesn't even mean I know how to make a game in Python or Java for Windows, let alone Mac. They're completely different systems with only loose links to being the same. Sometimes it's as simple as "close, window, and minimize are slightly different and and on the left and different colors and shapes than Windows." But the very filing system is drastically different. I mean take a look at Xbox. It uses some archaic 2001 derivative of FAT32 for storage... That's,... hard to work with. Even when you have someone who knows what they're doing, like IG. This is why 7 Days still has MD5 errors on Xbox.
As Laz Man said, seems it's steeped in controversy as they decided port first, then finish the game on PC. Looks like they rushed the game out as fast as they could onto console while Telltale could still pay them for their time. So now they're basically swimming in money as the game is being sold to the masses, they got paid to make it, and the company that would be taking a large portion of the cut to publish and advertise, are now gone. Basically a win-win all around for the company. Save for the horror story of backlash they received.
And, once again... 7 Days Console Edition is *not* an alpha. Microsoft and Sony have rigorous testing that must be done, and they deemed it was in a complete enough state to be sold as a complete product using one of alpha 14's builds. 14.5, if I recall correctly. This is why the game never entered early access on consoles. Telltale bought the publishing rights, decided they were going to try and sell it as a full product, and Sony and Microsoft agreed that it was stable enough, and had enough content in that build to be considered a complete stand alone package. As such, no update can break save games, as it is NOT an early access, in development, alpha-state game. Console was full release, 1.0, and as such, could not have such hindrances on players. Full release games do not wipe saves. This is one thing that made it hard to want to port over any features, as each new build tends to break the last one. Not only that, but PS4 and Xbox hardware were at their breaking point limits with alpha 14, anyways, even with the performance improvements they added. The game still ran on almost the lowest possible settings with 25-30 FPS, (just stable enough for Sony and Microsoft to give it the green light) and with no distant buildings, and an abysmal view range with blinding fog ever present to mask objects so that the game wouldn't die any time you moved faster than a walk.
Those consoles are physically incapable of running the new engine, on a very hardware-based limit. The most they could even do, is provide a little more of alpha 15 and 16 at the absolute max. But not the whole of 16, as some of that just could not function on current gen. Not even on the pro or the One X.
It is the same issues Space Engineers currently has on console. Took 6 years to port the game, and on the One X you can have 2 players in a MP game, (PC is 16-64) with an incredibly tiny PCU limit... (the limit each player can build. As in blocks, just like 7 Days) Those consoles just aren't built for voxel-based games like this. The sim speed, (simulation speed) often tanks in SE Xbox just from having one small grid ship. (An incredibly CPU and RAM heavy game. 32GBs of DDR4 3200MHz RAM running an XMP profile can run out of memory, lol. No memory leaks, either. It just requires that much memory sometimes.) Just one. My SE server has 70 small and large grid at any given time, and 32 players, lol.
Correction: With latest builds, you're now able to play 2 player split-screen with 2 more on Xbox live. So 4 in total with two split screen consoles on the One X. Oof, with a tether, no less. Just like Ark.
) to console, with money from telltale. This porting was interrupted by telltales implosion, but they could finish it after getting the rights back.
