Quote: "Raven, you are inferring that you have professional developers willing to port projects to this "console". Please explain how you expect developers to have faith in a company which exists only as an internet forum, which has no track record, and whoose employee has no experience in the field of console game development."
first point... is because we not an internet company, i've only kept a rudimentary site for people like you - who quite frankly can't actually afford the services we provide. Nor have we ever had the want nor need to hire a professional webmaster.
we're a registered UK & US company with bases set in Abbots Langley,Herts,UK - Chelmsford,Essex,UK - Westwood,CA,US
no point in paying for something you don't use, but now that we're finally getting some need for an internet site (especially with other development companies making a big deal out of them) ... then your likely to see the new mirrors once the new site is finished.
as for the second point. we have no track record that you know of. just because it isn't public knowlage what we have done over these past 6-7years doesn't mean there isn't a track record.
and it is very likely because we DON'T have an internet site that you don't actually know much about our company, what we do, what we've done, who we've done it for, etc...
just like you now doubt don't have much idea what Embalum Studios has done, or probably even heard of them. But they're a CG company in LA which has done the Cinematic effects in alot of current TV series you see... Suchas Dinotopia.
Just because you don't know any information doesn't mean there isn't any
as for the third point... you probably didn't know this, but we currently have 8 employee's worldwide.
2 of which include myself and Brent - we've also just hired a new person who will be dealing with all of the official FMTau business allowing us actual hands-on developers guys to get on with some real work rather than paperwork.
also the credibility for these larger companies doesn't just come from FMT being an industry name, but also from the fact that each of the employee's are people who also are pretty well known themselves.
look at it like this, a company like say Taratula who has been going for 10years ... they've released a few good titles like Oni & H&D for the PSOne - well they've got a little credibility right? That would be enough for a company to listen. But then how much more would they listen is say Kevin Cloud was part of the staff and was asking them personally? and not just him but also i dunno Gehard Vabraun ... with extra industry known names, suddenly those 10years experience with 1 or 2 titles don't look so bland - they look like something with some weight behind them.
And none of you know who exactly works for FMTau, you only know my full name - i might not be exactly a big name, however this isn't to say we don't have 3 or 4 members of the company who arn't.
and we're all realtively well known for our talents throughout companies.
We've all worked on the Windows/Playstation platforms, some for the GameCube already and a few for the DC, PS2 & XBox.
add this with the backing we have from the company actually developing the technology itself as these development companies have direct contact with them for new specs and everything.
Quote: "You also have no support from TGC (I know this is fact) - which would be like Bungie writing Halo 2 without any support from Microsoft."
we've not asked for DBS's support, and no-one is entirely sure about the direction it would take with it.
this is nothing like Bungie writing Halo2 without Microsofts support, i mean for one FMTau are not owned by DBS. Nor did we ever say that DBP would DEFINATELY be the language we'd supply, or say that it would be the ONLY language we'd support. Infact in our forums we noted we were also talking to the creators of Blitz3D and PureBasic to see if they wanted to created versions which could be downloaded for the machine.
The only reason that DBP was suggested from the start was becuase it was the best language for the task in my view and the view of others. It showed the hardware developer what could be done with a BASIC language didn't have to be something as silly as YaBASIC.
the mandate is still the same here, if we decide to go with DBP or not is upto us really - and if DBS say No when we ask, then fair enough not entirely bothered ... i'm sure we can get someone else.
It won't bother any of our developers, as some are programming in C++ others in DBP ... there is no licence to say they can't and the OS supports Win32 / DirectX / OpenGL / OpenAL / NOTA so really there is no problem in actually running the software once complete no matter what the developers use.
as for Banshee, from what i've seen they have many more than just two active employees -
Nick Igoe, Andy Igoe, Kevin Bolt, Rachel (dont member the last name)
each do specific tasks and do soem good work... if you happen to know something i don't then please feel free to share, because over the past few weeks i've seen for myself how fast they all work and how well they can produce that work. I feel confident that they can possibly pull of a few good budget titles aimed more at gamers of a similar ilk to Ermes.
