Ever since Microsoft has been hammered over its terrible service decisions about the Xbox One, they’ve been willing to make changes. ID@Xbox, Microsoft’s confusing new title for their indie developer program, seems to have its heart in the right place.
Qualified developers will receive two Xbox One development kits which includes Smartglass and Kinect technologies, equipping would-be indie developers with everything they need to design an Xbox One experience of their own. There are no fees, no tricks, no traps. Until you read the fine print, anyways. What does “qualified” entail?
…professional independent game developers who have a proven track record of shipping games…
Oops. If you were hoping to discover new indies on the Xbox, you may want to forget about it. The statement implies that qualified developers are ones who are already successful, who you’ve already heard of, and who above all can probably afford their own dev kits. So although you might be discovering new games on Xbox One, you won’t be discovering new developers any time soon as the implication is that they will be turned down under ID@Xbox. We’ll have to wait and see how strict this actually is in practice and whether this is a policy statement and not some sort of horrifying error.
Indeed, there’s a line to be walked between letting any average Joe submit his first Flash game and ensuring that only serious seasoned developers can sign up and be on board, but that merit should be decided based on the promise shown by the developer and not reliant on them having a massive body of work behind them. This isn’t how we discover new things.
For those who do qualify, it would appear the intent is to allow for self-publishing, vaguely similar to the self-publishing systems present in current digital PC marketplaces like Steam Greenlight (which also has a restrictive qualification process) and Desura (which is far more open).
At least in a touch of good news for indie developers, it is intended that indie games not be locked away in some dank attic, and will appear alongside other more corporate titles on the Xbox marketplace.
Developers want their games with all the other games, they don’t want them to be segregated away.
Indeed. More on this as Gamescom rolls along.
