| Wright said: Bad relationship with Microsoft? What a shame. I love the guy's ideas. Considering Braid debuted exclusively in the 360 and then later ported to every other platform, I thought they actually get along fine. |
I made a thread a few days ago that talked about some of the problems indie developers have had with Microsoft, including Jonathon Blow. http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=156544&page=1
The point of my thread was to ask if Microsoft would be wise to make things easier with their next gen device. Some popular developers have had some bad experiences.
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Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness) -
"I think the thing that they don't understand -- between that and the cert stuff that they do -- they just kind of make themselves a pain in the ass. For a big game, for a triple-A game that costs 60 bucks, and has a giant budget and all these people working on it, the amount extra that that pain in the ass adds is not that much," Blow said.
"But if you make an XBLA game, the amount of bullshit that adds is gigantic. It can take a third to a half of the effort required to build your game, in some cases, and I don't think that they understand that. I don't think that they understand that, at least for that size of game, they're competing very heavily with Steam and iOS for developer mindshare."
Cert -- or certification, in which a developer's game must meet certain technical requirements dictated by Microsoft before it can be released on the platform -- isn't the only problem.
"I can live a comfortable life, and just put my game on Steam without that much of a hassle, or I can have the XBLA business people dick me around and give me asshole contracts that I need to spend three months negotiating back to somewhere reasonable, that they knew," said Blow. "And then have all these arguments with them and go through this horrible cert process. It's like, at some point, the question 'Why should I do that?' arises." -- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/126427/Interview_Jonathan_Blow__Xbox_Live_Arcade_A_Pain_In_The_Ass_For_Indies.php#.UTaCITswd8E
