Defold game developers will now be able to release their projects on XBOX consoles
The Defold Foundation has announced the release of the new version of the open engine Defold — version 1.14.0. The main innovation is the addition of support for XBOX.
As highlighted by the engine team, the tools and documentation necessary for releasing games on XBOX consoles are provided free of charge. However, developers must first gain approval from Microsoft to access them. This can be achieved by registering in the indie program ID@Xbox, for example.
The support for XBOX was initially planned to be integrated into Defold much earlier, but it turned out to be a challenging task for the Defold Foundation. In the comments under the announcement post on social network X, the team explained that the delay is partly due to the engine not being monetized. Its development is funded through their own resources and donations from the game development community, which does not facilitate rapid progress.
In any case, Defold now officially supports all three major console platforms: XBOX, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. The engine also allows the creation of games for PC, mobile devices, and the web.
To recall, the Defold engine was initially created by Avalanche Studios co-founders Christian Murray and Ragnar Svensson. It was later acquired by King, which eventually transferred the tool to the Defold Foundation.