Arguably the two best Xbox Live Arcade games to ever hit the system are Castle Crashers and Braid, two independent games. If rumors are to be believed, Microsoft has become quick to forget such things, as the platform holder is planning to "dramatically reduce" the amount of indie games to hit the service.
The gossip stems from the idea that Microsoft is worried about too much software cluttering up XBLA, and it's being reported that a number of major publishers have put pressure on MS to reduce the amount of competition for their own games, shutting out indie devs so that stuff like Bliss Island has a better chance to flourish.
Apparently, there are different rules for XBLA developers, depending on whether or not a major publisher backs you up. Indie devs are upset that their games are rejected for being "too similar" to other games on the service, while big publishers are allowed to "flood it with retro remakes."
If this is true, then it's pretty bloody disgusting. The idea that Microsoft would slam its door in the face of the same types of studios that gave us Castle Crashers, just so it can please the same kind of publishers that spew up garbage like Double D Dodgeball is despicable and rather sad. Even worse are the chickensh*t publishers that would whine and cry about too much competition from studios ten times smaller than they are.
I hope this isn't true, because if it is, it's utterly pathetic and one of the more depressing things to come from the industry in a while.
Contest:
8:20 AM on 07.14.2009
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Oh, and inb4 Sexualchocolate.
STORM THE GATE!
Ahhh, the power of the almighty dollar.
I doubt Microsoft would be willing to make less money off XBLA due to some publisher's whining. I mean, what's the publisher gonna do? Stop supporting the 360 or XBLA?
Why, that would be stupider than Activision pulling support from Sony!
Though I do fully acknowledge that I could be wrong, the way I see it, MS holds all the cards here and they're not going to turn away money or games that make them.
MS should set up a help line to help indie out. They need to learn about graphic design and some other stuff to help sell their stuff. Maybe release stuff online, because any developer advice can help these people.
Bailing on them would really suck. Don't do what Sony did with Yaroze recently. You put too much work into XNA and Kudo, to drop them.
All just speculation of course.
Wait, what?
Do you know what an independent game is?
What were we talking about?
But seriously games need to stay cheaper....take Worms 2: Armageddon's advice
I say who cares if Microsoft is locking out crapware.....Look at the Nintendo DS and Wii Game Libraries.....too much sorry software crowding the shelves lets good games get lost in the shuffle sometimes.
If Microsoft wishes to let the indie developers compete against one another for a vaunted featured slot on the XBL service....SO BE IT....especially if it guarantees high quality games I'd actually like to play and spend my money on.
COMPETITION BREEDS QUALITY.......
Either way, it's one more reason not to buy Microsoft products. Too bad, because I'd really like to get some quality time with Castle Crashers. Hopefully those guys will take another look at PS3 where games like that are not just allowed but encouraged.
Even some big devs are snubbed by microsoft's charge for everything make every dollar approach, as epic said they wanted their map packs to be free, but MS said no.
This doesn't surprise me at all, i bet microsoft will charge a listing premium for indie devs.
Like it or not, there are still egos to be stroked, and I'm sure some of the big name publishers don't like being upstaged by independent developers with original IP that the publishers don't get to own. For that, they probably want XBLA as their playground.
On the other hand, if Microsoft were to do this, wouldn't it make sense for them to also parse out some of the remakes? For example, Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3 being alongside Geometry Wars is silly. It would be smarter to create a Vintage Games Channel or something to combat Nintendo's Virtual Console.
That actually brings to mind a question. Microsoft won't give the Xbox Originals their own Achievements because, as they put it, the original games didn't have Achievements on Xbox. Why then does Sonic the Hedgehog, Ecco the Dolphin, and Pac-Man have Achievement on XBLA? I'm pretty sure the Sega Genesis and Arcade cabinets didn't have those back in the day.
Cover flow doesn't work well for hundreds of titles, and neither do boring text lists. The text lists are especially retarded when the indy games have the most ridiculous names ever.
What M$ should do is use that Silverlight shit to provide each game title with a quick video snippit of the gameplay. So I kind of want to see a giant page of animated thumbnails. And I want this page to be sortable, and filterable by multiple attributes like genre(s), release date(s), popularity score(s), reviews, and etc... These are GAMES, not books. I want to see pictures, preferably moving ones, and I want to see them quickly, and easily... not via shitty, clunky, buried menus and buffer screens.
Speaking of which I'm on 12mbit broadband and can stream like 5 HD furry pr0n movies while torrenting my favorite linux distro that I then burn to blu-ray and shoot at the neighborhood cats with my blu-ray gun. So what the fuck is up with such shitty Live data fetch speeds.
M$ needs to speed up its delivery of data to the menu, I hate waiting for information to pop in 10 seconds after the blank page is rendered on my screen. You (M$) always have bandwidth to feed me shit like ads, how about stuff that I actually care and WANT to see? ...lame.
So I can understand why everyone is whining about the library being crowded and making it impossible to find good games, published OR indy... 4chan is organized better.