At the Build developer conference last week it became a little more clear why Microsoft is not allowing self publishing of games for Xbox One.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-01-xbox-one-devs-can-get-a-head-start-with-windows-8

By the sound of things the idea is to get indies to publish Windows 8/RT apps first (Windows Phone too if they are nice). They will most likely provide an SDK which will allow for those apps to be published on Xbox One app store as well with minimal to no effort.

Windows 8/RT/Phone devices have Xbox Live gaming hubs and by getting the indie devs to code 1 game for all Microsoft platforms at once, they are able to provide support for all of their platforms with minimal dev efforts, and maximize the app reach for the indie developers. Its a way to compete with iOS and Android which also allow for apps to be created for different platforms in one swoop.

Essentially they want to eliminate this:

Indie game developer -> Xbox One game

and instead have developers do this:

Indie game developer -> Windows 8/RT/Phone Xbox Game -> Xbox One Game

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

I'm waiting to see if the Win 8/phone/RT will grow some legs before deciding to try and develop something on those platforms. If they do all grow legs it would be a great market due to the overall vision of MS and creating a more unified OS across various devices. However, I think in the future Android will eventually come out with a comparable desktop OS that could be more appealing than Win 8.

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.

It may be a huge market but is it one that will buy their games?   Most Indie games start out between 9.99-14.99. How well do games at those prices sell?  I believe every game on the top 100 games sold on Android is 4.99 or less, Minecraft being the exception at 6.99.  That would be a pretty hard sell to an indie developer to have to design the game to work on so many different devices with ouy a decent return on it. I just dont see games priced in that range being something that mobile users or even Windows 8 app users as something that will justify the work put in on it.

Most indie games on xbox live start at 99 cents and go as high as 9.99

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live_Indie_Games

Not much different than the smartphone games pricing model.

I feel weird calling them smartphone games, since the only reason they are considered smartphone games is because they dont have a distribution method on to consoles. This line should very much dissapear next gen.

Idk. Trying to force this doesn't seem smart to me and clearly there has been a lot of criticism about the XBoX 1 dev policies. I would think me would get these devs working on xbo games n then go to 8/RT etc

Does not look a smart move, but I hope it works. I hpe everyone could play games like "Soul Saga", "A Hat in Time" etc

Im curious why you think this isnt a smart move? Ive played some awesomely fun games on my iPad and Surface RT which could work on consoles perfectly fine. Something like Jetpack Joyride or Endless Skater is really fun to play.

It also gives Microsoft some extra leverage to get apps made for Windows 8 and phone...

Xbox One DOES support self publishing then, but only if a dev makes the game for a larger audience. How horrible!!!