ethomaz said:
This is getting in circle. Sidhe Interactive: "A few months ago this was not being planned by them internally, and they explicitly said it wasn't going to be possible (and that was the clear message behind closed doors). There were even factions within Microsoft aware of the stupidity of the situation who were proactively looking for loopholes to effectively allow self publishing in a practical sense even if it wasn't technically the case. The self publishing policies for indies games is ALL NEW! A 180 turn around... until yesterday no indie was allowed to do that. Well in fact the self publishing feature won't be ready for Xbone launch... so until they implement this feature in 2014 the indies will use the actual process where you need a big publisher to make your game into Xbone. So my NOW is wrong because the policies WILL ONLY CHANGE some time after Xbone launch. |
You didn't read the article I linked dating back to April, where the Indie publishing stance was outlined back then.
I'm going to put Xbox One terms into Xbox 360 terms, so the article I linked to is more understandable.
Back in April, Microsoft said that if indpendent developers wanted to publish Xbox LIVE Arcade games, or Retail games, it would have to publish using a publisher. Which, if they didn't have a publisher, Microsoft was willing to be that publisher. Xbox LIVE Indie Games were unaffected. Meaning, the policies toward indie developers wouldn't change.
Microsoft after the launch of Xbox One said that with Xbox LIVE on the Xbox One there would no longer be a distinction between Xbox LIVE Arcade games and retail games. They would all be under the Games marketplace (store).
At the beginning of the month, if not before then, it was said that independent developers would be able to self-publish via the Apps marketplace (store). This would mean games would be published both to Windows 8 and Xbox One's App store (potentially). But they would be able to do that without a publisher. This feature is equivalent to the Xbox LIVE Indie Games with the Xbox 360. Again, as the article in April stated, the policy was no different toward XBLIG. Even the use of a standard console as a development unit is consistent with Xbox LIVE Indie Games and the XNA Club. Trust me, I was a part of it.
Independent publishers that develop what amounts to Xbox LIVE Arcade or Retail games must use a publisher. This, again, is consistent with what was stated in April. There is NO 180!
Microsoft has changed their policies on how games and patches get processed, this is a policy change from the Xbox 360 and this is a change that developers wanted because some felt Microsoft's policy was draconian. Microsoft previously announced that it had dropped the fee associated with changes as well.
Now. Whether this was the policy in January, I can't speak to that. What I can say is that as of April, the policy as it was "leaked" today was essentially presented. What is new are specifics on the publishing process, and what the limit for independent publishing are.
