14 DAY TRIAL // Terraria will be launched on the Xbox Live service and on the PlayStation Network with support from publisher 505 Games, and the developers behind the game believe that there’s a clear niche that the game can fill, especially considering the success that Mineraft has seen on the same platform.
Andrew Spink, one of the two developers who created Terraria, told Gamasutra that, “I'm not sure why the big studios and console developers haven't picked up on the sandbox idea already. It seems like the indie crowd or smaller teams are the only ones getting it.”
The port of the game for Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 is handled by Engine Software and the game should be launched in 2013.
Re-Logic, the developers of the title, coded most of the game using C# and with Microsoft XNA because they already had console ports in mind during the development process.
John Merchant, who is a global brand manager working at 505 Games, has added, “It's hard not to notice how well Minecraft XBLA has done, and for us it was definitely interesting to see the nuts and bolts of how they handled the jump from PC.”
Recently, Microsoft has announced that more than 4 million copies of Minecraft were sold since the game was launched on Xbox Live.
On the PC, Terraria has also sold more than 1.6 million units since it was introduced during May 2011.
The game is not a Minecraft clone and allows players to explore a 2D world which is made up out of sprites that bring old role-playing games to mind.
The game also has a multiplayer focus.
Microsoft and Sony are opening up to indie projects at the moment as they are trying to extract more sales out of the aging Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.