Microsoft's "indie" gaming strategy for Xbox One

[gigantor21]

disolitude said:

fauzman said:
I don't get it. In that case why not just allow windows8 etc games to be selfpublished as well. Also not all devs may want to publish on RT/8/phone. Wouldn't this just be more of a hassle for them.

In addition, from dev comments they seem to far pref

Win 8 apps and games are self published. There are members on this forums that made windows 8 apps.

MS just wants people who want to self publish games to treat them like apps and make them for Windows first. They will probably talk about cross platform play, unified leaderboards and other cool things to justify it as well as the obvious broader reach of users that the games can be sold to.

In terms of hassle, yeah some devs may only want to make console games and not optimize for touch screens. Those devs obviously don't realize the huge market they are leaving on the table by not publishing on Windows 8, Android, iOS...I'm not sure Microsoft can do much there other than show them some numbers in terms of potential gamers they are missing out on.

 

Or perhaps the issue is that they'd want to make hardware for the separate platforms that leverages each of their individual strengths? Like making stuff for phones that maximizes touchscreen use, while building games for XBL around the controller and/or Kinect? That's been going on for years.

Having to build for the whole Xbox ecosystem just to get your game on the actual Xbox seems needlessly restrictive to me. Allowing self-publishing on all platforms would be much more flexible.