With Microsoft failing to recognize the smaller studios and indie developers at there rightful business level, Lorne Lanning the co-found of Oddworld Inhabitant said “it doesn’t seem like any of the little guys are on the radar”. When VG247 talked to Lanning about Microsofts bad approach to indie developers on the Xbox One he brought up their problems with releasing Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath HD on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
The target kept on moving, and eventually we couldn’t get clear answers for 15 months,” he said. “We were like, ‘Look. We’re on seven other networks. It’s been no-brainers on all of them. We’re not asking you for money. We’re not asking you for advertising. We’re little guys, we have to release. We can’t get a straight answer. Then we release on PSN, and we get a mail the next day that says, ‘Oh, you released on PSN at a lower price point, you didn’t meet our margins, sorry you can’t be on the system.’ Boom. And that was it. We’re not on the radar. We’re little guys. It doesn’t seem like any of the little guys are on the radar. When we listen to them talk, we have to laugh. It’s pure rhetoric.
Many indie developers are not happy with the strategy that Microsoft is using for the Xbox One. With the Xbox One not putting games in categories like the “Xbox Live Arcade” or “Indie Games” it seems like that Microsoft is completely abandoning indie developers. With Sony having a complete different strategy, Microsoft is making indie game developers make partnerships with bigger game developers. With Sony’s Jack Tretton supporting indie developers by saying “Steven Spielbergs of our industry coming out of one- and two-man teams”. Lanning also had a similiar thing to say about this,
Right now people like us are clearly not in Xbox One’s business model. And there’s nothing we can do about that. Ten years from now, the biggest banners out there, the hundred million dollar games, are going to be what happened in the indie community. Someone’s going to be burning the next hundred million dollar properties here, and it might be the least likely guy that was on that stage at the Sony conference. But that’s where it’s going to come from, and the smart people know that. I don’t see any indication of that foresight up in Redmond. They do not seem to be listening to their audience.
With all of the cristicm that is surrounding Microsfts take on indie games for the next-gen, before Don Mattrick had left he stated that the console will “have an independent creator program”.
