War Pig wrote:IIRC, there was incompatibility with the Xbox SDK and the GPL that made the possibility of developing bzflag for that platform, and others like it, impractical from a licensing perspective.
Can't remember if there was an issue with the Xbox SDK, but I know that the Apple App Store license conflicts with the GPL. However, BZFlag is LGPL, but I'm not sure how the differences between GPL and LGPL would affect the app store eligibility.
The main problem with writing for game consoles is that you generally have to pay a very large sum of money to get a development kit, and then you have to code specifically for that platform (or buy some game engine that can help you target multiple platforms). For a free game, that's just not reasonable. The Xbox 360 does have the ability for indie developers to write games using C# and the XNA framework for a nominal fee (I think it's like $100/year/developer).
War Pig wrote:All that said, bzflag must eventually move to these sorts of devices, as the lightweight gaming landscape moves away from the desktop and onto mobile and dedicated devices.
I really don't think you'll see BZFlag move to console/mobile devices, ever. It would be a new game in the spirit of BZFlag.
War Pig wrote:As soon as a developer comes along that has the both interest and skills, the bzApp will be born. Already there is a developer working on porting bzadmin to ios. Can a client be far behind?
Yes, VERY far behind. Also, it isn't someone "porting" bzadmin to iOS. It is someone writing a completely new piece of software that can talk to BZFlag servers and operate in the same fashion as bzadmin.