The Sorry Saga Of Skulls Of The Shogun & Windows 8
The whole thing is worth reading, but the money quotes are:
“When people call Microsoft ‘evil’, while I don’t want to defend them, it’s kind of an undeserved compliment. To be evil, you have to have vision, you have to have communication, execution… None of those are traits are things that I would ascribe to Microsoft Studios.”
“They came across as though they were institutionally incompetent. I think they’re not really set up to be a decent publisher. I do feel slightly bad saying that, because there were people there who worked hard on our behalf, but at the same time there are systemic problems with the way that division is setup and run.”
“I think maybe Microsoft as a whole were taking on a lot more than they can chew with the Windows 8 launch, and there were so many different pieces of the puzzle – Xbox Live, different operating system, interfaces, the tablet, all those different technologies. Any one of those gets late, it pushes the other ones.”
He doesn’t subscribe to the idea that Microsoft has become anti-indie, however. “There are people there, like Chris Charla, the portfolio manager of XBLA – though that’s probably changing, because XBLA is going away – who are great champions, but as a whole, it’s not that Microsoft loves or even hates indies. It’s just that they’re an indifferent machine to it all.”
That last part is the impression I've had of MGS for a while. They are a great partner for the few indie games they're invested in and see as having the potential to sell 500,000+ units, usually those that are already wildly successful elsewhere (Minecraft) or ones by very talented and established indie devs like Capybara, but otherwise they just don't care about making life easier for you to make your silly little games.
