Black Mesa for Consoles?

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

Hi All,

Looong time HL2 fan, first time poster. Does anyone know why not, or if Black Mesa is going to come to consoles? I mean with the 20th year anniversary and with XEN coming out 2019, it would be so fitting and welcomed highly in the gaming market for Half-Life to be welcomed back as a “Remaster”. There are soo many “Remasters” out there and with XEN being completed in 2019, this will mark the FULL completion of Half-Life again by the fans, for the fans! If it comes out for both PC and Consoles, then the developers would make money, Fans would be so happy and of course it would bring ALOT of attention back to the game, which could spark…dare he say it…he is going to say it…Half-Life 3.

#2

Black Mesa will not be ported to consoles.

#3

There are currently no plans to port it to console or even any other PC OS in an official capacity.

I say currently because who knows what might happen in the future, depending on BM’s and Crowbar Collective’s long term success, some other team might approach CC and pitch a console port to them, perhaps even CC themselves.

After all, an all-new version of Insurgency is currently being made for PC and consoles and that seemed less likely to happen than BM is.

#4

Why won’t it? It really should!

#5

Because, the team is likely going to move on once they are done with BM on PC. That and they can only really make it for the PC.

#6

Like @darkone said, the team is likely to move on after they are done with BM. The other reason is the way the console industry works. Microsoft & Sony are behind a paywall to get content onto the platform. There’s a lot of red tape involved to get things onto XBox, and Playstation.

At the end of the day, they’re indie devs who don’t have the backing of a major corporation, let alone this project going beyond passion (though that can be debated at this point) - from a business prospective, it’s not worth it.

It’s not to say it won’t happen, but it’s very unlikely at this point in time. I don’t know how they do things internally at CC, but I know for a fact it’s tough to get onto Microshaft & Phony’s closed systems without connections or publishers backing you. I had to do a rough overview of potential options for my own studio and this came up more than once. It’s prohibitively expensive & time consuming for a small business to do.

#7

Hey all,

All your responses great thanks alot for clearing it up. It is such a shame that consoles make it so hard to port over!? BM would make alot of money with this game being released on consoles also though. Such a shame they don’t do it. Loved playing the first part. Looking forward to the second. Would of been great to play it on console also.

Love HL Fans!

#8

I am also not sure, if it would be a way to do it legally. CC probably do not have any permission to use, port or distribute Source game outside Steam.

#9

In addition to the above reasons, it’s worth noting that, as far as I’m aware, licensing costs for middleware are per-platform. Since the version of Source that Black Mesa runs on uses Havok and, unless they’ve replaced it, Miles Sound System, you’d be looking at a massive cost just to get the game able to legally be ported. From what I heard that’s actually the bulk of the cost for licensing the engine, rather than Valve’s engine code itself, and I don’t think there’s enough of a mainstream market for them to recoup the cost of licensing those for consoles. Which is probably one of the main reasons the new version of The Stanley Parable has been built in Unity instead of just straight ported.

And since the series has never done particularly well outside of PC, nearly anyone who’s interested in playing a remake of Half-Life probably either uses PC as their main platform or has one as well as their favorite console.

It’d be great to see BM on the PS4 or Xbox, but it’s just not feasible for a team that doesn’t have an unlimited budget for licenses and marketing.

#10

Wow thanks for the detail response :). Ah that is such a shame to hear though. You have cleared it up though. Would of been great to see this game and more of Valve games get to console but makes sense.

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#11

Yes, I think you have explained very well the main reasons
The conclusion is that the factors that prevent a port to consoles are mostly legal and economic.
But I do not think there is any technical impediment. I am not an expert, although I would say that Black Mesa could work easily in any current console (PS4, Pro, XBOne, X, Switch) at maximum capacity without problems. It would only depend on the capacity of the team that is responsible for carrying out the port.

If it were possible to make the port, Panic Button would be the one to do it. I think.

#12

I wouldn’t say that they’re non-technical because in software these’s a lot of overlap between legal and technical issues, but more importantly Black Mesa is also somewhat finicky about what kind of graphics hardware it runs on with some configurations producing strange bugs- so I’d say it’s a toss-up if it would even work on a given console.

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Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.