Xbox One Self Publishing?
In recent weeks, Microsoft have been reversing a lot of their policies – including dropping the fees for playing used games, removing its DRM (Always-Online) requirements and now Microsoft are not only allowing Indie Developers to self-publish games, they are also saying that each and every Xbox One console can be used for development – much like the Playstation 4, as Indie Developers can access every bit of RAM on the console and all of the power it has, and now Xbox One developers are getting the same!
Xbox corporate VP, Marc Whitten had this to say,
“Our vision is that every person can be a creator. That every Xbox One can be used for development. That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE. We’ll have more details on the program and the timeline at Gamescom in August.”
From the statement we can draw that all Xbox One retail units can be used as a developer kit, much like iOS devices, meaning that Indie Developers do not have to buy a separate console for development, which are often very expensive. However, it is not all good news, because Marc Whitten also stated that the dev kit functionality would not be available at launch, but will be added at a later date; this still adds to Indie developer’s misery because they will not be able to test their games correctly on the console, resulting in their games not being able to release alongside the launch of the Xbox One, does this mean that Indie developers are still switching to the Playstation 4 or will they stay with Microsoft’s Xbox One and risk their game being released at a later date?
In addition to the ability to use retail consoles as a dev kit, Indie developers will now be able to self-publish their games, instead of having to get a publishing partner – that they were required to do before, so their game could be published to the Xbox Live Marketplace. It has previously been stated by several Microsoft employees that there would not be distinct Xbox Live Arcade and Indie channels, but now Microsoft has confirmed that they want to see all Indie and Arcade games on the Marketplace alongside the major triple-AAA titles. Whitten explains,
“Of course there will be different pivots inside of that. There will be everything from what are we curating, kind of like spotlight content, to the normal discoverability stuff like recommendations, what’s trending, what’s got a lot of engagement on the platform, and you’d be able to find that content in any of those. There wouldn’t be any difference based on what type of game it was. Then of course there will be other type of pivots where you can go and look at whether its a genre of game or any other. But you shouldn’t think of it as there’s an indie area and a non-indie area.”
This shows us that different games will be featured in different sections of the Xbox Live Marketplace, and all genres and types of games will be put into the same area instead of separating triple-AAA titles from Indie games.
According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the major changes to the Xbox One console, come as part of a ‘sweeping restructuring plan’ designed to enable greater innovation and efficiency in the face of fierce competition in the technology sector. He then went on to say,
“Improving our performance has three big dimensions: focusing the whole company on a single strategy, improving our capability in all disciplines and engineering/technology areas, and working together with more collaboration and agility around our common goals.”
These announcements are a clear response to Sony’s push for Indie developers on the Playstation 4 console, and Microsoft have realized that they want to appeal to smaller developers as well, look at Minecraft – that was an Indie game and now it is one of the most successful games across several platforms!
Are you more likely to buy an Xbox One console now, compared to what you were at E3?
