Indie devs fear marginalisation by new Xbox dash
Overhaul labels XBLIG titles 'specialty shops', won't show them in searches
Independent developers are protesting changes to the Xbox Live Marketplace that, they claim, reduce the likelihood of console owners finding their games.
Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIGs) has been relocated from the games store section of the Marketplace to a new area known as 'Specialty Shops,' which also plays home to the likes of Avatar customisation items.
In addition, indie titles no longer show up in title name and genre searches on the Marketplace, and can only be found by specifically visiting the Specialty Shops.
In a long-running thread on the App Hub (formerly XNA) forums, many developers have expressed their discontent with the new system.
Said a member of Projector Games, "Steam Heroes was one of the first games to come out after the new dash change and I have to say that our sales have been beyond horrible - which is surprising, as I'd say it's one of the better games I've released on XBLIG."
"We [are] now beside the walking dead Game Room," claimed FuncWork's Michael C. Neel. "The list of Specialty Shops is almost a "VH1 Where are they now?" episode."
However, other developers were cautiously positive, claiming the reorganisation might help the better games float to the top, and that proximity to the likes of the Avatar and Rock Band stores may prove beneficial.
"My experience has been that when the beta launched my 2 year old game Drum Kit had a weird spike in sales for about a week or two," said 'BigDaddio.'
Many developers also lamented opaque game approval rules and an alleged lack of communication from Microsoft.
However, if Microsoft feel there's a need for an app marketplace to filter out all the XBLIGs that are non-games, I'm all for that.
Now can someone please change my UI back to the old one, this new one is bloody awful.
Edited 1 times. Last edit by Wesley Williams on 2nd November 2010 9:23am
Microsoft has to rethink the XBLIG, starting with the certification process of the games, and following with achievements & leaderboards. Three things that most XBLIG developers are demanding for a long time now.
As for the overall look of the dashboard I like it over the deck of cards style. Certainly feel more at home and the information is there now.
XNA is great tech, by far my favourite way to make games. I WANT to use it. But what seems to happen is that the indie game channel gets shoe horned into whatever current strategic focus predominates over at Redmond. Yesterday it was avatars and casual. Today it's mobile. MS wants XBLIG devs to churn out games for win7 phones, hence XNA 4.0's efforts to finally produce a consistent cross platform API. What will it be tomorrow? Kinect support?
It's all well and good to point XNA developers at the latest channel - but without a front row seat on the market place it's all redundant. The top selling indie games are only shifting 100-200k copies, which is a lot but as a dev when you consider that this is your absolute BEST CASE SCENARIO you begin to think of other options, where the potential upside doesn't look so capped.
This will remove, the possibility of 'pun sales', when people buying other games are looking for something else then have a go on the Indies.
Now Indie developer's who have no budget will not be able to get any sales unless they invest heavily into marketing. Which is ridiculas as it is well known the games released here are small teams or individuals as hobbyists.