Microsoft against indie games. Locks them out in favour of major publishers

[Onyxmeth]

shio said:

Onyxmeth said:

I don't see why these complainers can't merely jump into the Community games section. If the release is very good, it will get bumped up to the most popular, and it will garner more attention and sales that way, so next release MS may be more willing to allow their big project into XBLA itself. It's called earning their place, and yes it may take a release or two to get to hang with the big boy publishers. This is why they created XNA in the first place, so indy studios had their own avenue to get noticed and not have to compete against what would likely be bigger, more robust, and more marketable releases from third party developers and MS themselves. Do these guys really want to compete against Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Battlefield 1943 and Shadow Complex? They'll get swallowed.

The Community games section is for hobbyists and amateur devs, it is not for proffessional developers nor is a place to make money. We are talking about real developers that are in a small, indie team and that get paid like any dev from a big studio. Indie devs are the people that Audiosurf, or Mount & Blade, or Zeno Clash, etc...

Indie developers have been the ones that have done original things, and spurred a tremendous amount of creativity that we stopped seeing in big studios and publishers. What Microsoft is doing is take from indie devs and give to the big publishers, in order to satisfy the publishers, but it will hurt the ones that need support the most.

I mean, publishers are releasing remakes that don't even add anything to the experience, games that have no originality. Hell, maybe Audiosurf or Zeno Clash will never come to the Xbox 360 because of them.

Here's an idea. Find me 35 titles per year from indy developers on the 360 that are of Audiosurf, Zeno Clash and Mount & Blade quality and then we'll talk about this. Until then, I see 35 as a perfectly acceptable number since there are probably no more than 5 genuinely great indy titles per year from indy devs to begin with. Frankly, I can count the total number of indy titles on XBLA that are of Audiosurf quality on one hand, and I won't lift every finger, trust me.