A lot went wrong, in the eyes of a whole mess of people, regarding Microsoft's Xbox One unveil. You know that by now.
But one thing strikes me as particularly significant -- even more significant than has been so far recognized: the inability to self-publish games on Xbox One.
Whereas Microsoft completely ignored independent developers, Sony put Jonathan Blow and The Witness on stage for the PlayStation 4 announcement.
Focusing on that symbolic gesture obscures a more important truth: you don't have to be Jonathan Blow to publish your game on Sony (and Nintendo!) platforms with a minimum of fuss, right now. With Microsoft, you cannot. This issue certainly affects indies in a profound way, but it's a much, much bigger issue than it appears to be if you limit your view to "indies."
How it works today
Yes, Microsoft exec Don Mattrick has fed Kotaku some platitudes. But with details unspecified and with developers telling me things are status quo, these nice words are, to be charitable, vague.
Let's start with how things actually work today.
All games published on Xbox Live Arcade -- the system's primary download service -- require a publisher. As those who have been paying attention know, any games which you might think were self-published by their developers -- say Castle Crashers, or Spelunky -- are actually published by Microsoft Studios (as is Minecraft, Mr. Mattrick.)
Even an IGF grand prize win doesn't mean Microsoft will publish you (what's up, Monaco?). Bastion, which is one of the biggest indie games of the generation, went with Warner Bros., at least in part to get onto Xbox Live Arcade. Of course, that's not the only reason to work with a publisher -- there's marketing, PR, and other benefits -- but the point is: on Xbox, you do not have a choice.
To boil it all down to the essential point I want to get to, an experienced indie developer recently put it to me like this: "Microsoft has no concept of a digital publisher."
What does that mean? To get an opportunity to publish a digital game on an Xbox platform, you must publish retail titles. I had thought that this was one-to-one -- meaning for each retail title a publisher releases, it can also release one Xbox Live game. But I recently spoke to someone who worked at a publisher with a two-to-one ratio.
"Two digital games for each retail release?" I asked. Nope. It worked the other way around: Two retail games released meant the publisher got one digital download slot. And someone from another publisher told me that to even be allowed to publish games on Xbox 360 in the first place, the company had to slate three retail games up front.
While policies do evolve over time and the dimensions of these agreements do change, to some extent, from publisher to publisher, you can see how hard it is to get involved in the Xbox publishing ecosystem to begin with -- and how impossible it is for any company whose strategy does not revolve around retail games.
A challenging ecosystem
Then, of course, is the fact that most big publishers aren't set up to care about today's digital games. It's just not in their genes (or, more importantly, their business models). Minecraft aside, $10-15 games result in pocket change caught between the rock of $60 retail titles and the hard place of free-to-play mobile games. No matter how big, publishers have limited attentions. That is just reality.
Even if a publisher does love digital -- take Capcom as an example -- it probably already has a strategy in place. The new Phoenix Wright game for 3DS, which hit retail in Japan, is a digital-only title in the West. Sure, if it were for Xbox, Capcom would have a slot to put it in. But that would also mean even one fewer slot to potentially give to someone else's game.
Smaller, hungrier publishers don't get as many slots, like I mentioned, and if they focus on niche titles, they're probably increasingly looking to go digital with their own stuff. Finding a publisher is going to be increasingly challenging.
So I think it's fair to say that the Xbox ecosystem is extremely difficult for developers who aren't attached to publishers and will only get worse. As of last month, Microsoft has quietly dropped patch fees for downloadable games. That seems to be as far as the publisher is willing to go in catching up to 2013 with its policies on digital-only titles.
This doesn't just affect small 'indies'
But here's the clincher: if you think that only 'indies" are going to be harmed by draconian rules around digital publishing, you are simply not living in 2013. To start, you have to stop thinking about "indies" in that convenient shorthand that calls to mind Phil Fish and others like him. It's not just tiny shops with tiny games who are going digital-only these days.
Minecraft is huge on Xbox Live Arcade, but Mojang did not put it there. Will DayZ end up on Xbox One? Who knows! Even if it does, just like Minecraft, it will not be the same as the PC version -- players will miss out on the alpha and be segregated from the larger community. Who knows what else will be different?
Yes, a game like a standalone DayZ will ship as a retail title, eventually, even on PC. But for a long time -- a fun-filled time for its fans and developers, and a profitable one for its publisher -- there would be no way to get it onto Xbox One. This alpha is a period that its project lead considers literally essential to the creation of the game itself. Do you think he is alone in developing games this way? For how long?
And what of CCP? Its Dust 514 is a PlayStation 3 exclusive, so far -- because it's a digital-only release, and probably also because it talks to CCP's EVE Online servers (another no-no according to the Xbox camp, at least not without very special permission). Dust 514 may be flawed, but to dismiss what it represents would be an error.
CCP is not ever going to publish a retail game on an Xbox console, I'd wager. The only way you can buy EVE Online new in a box at this point is to order an insane collectors edition direct from Iceland. Sure, CCP could find a publishing partner if it wanted to, as it has in the past, but... why? There is no reason.
These are all examples of what's happening now. Right now. Extrapolate.
The relationship machine
Think about how much things changed between 2005, when the Xbox 360 was introduced, and 2013, when the Xbox One will go on sale. Games evolve quickly -- the games themselves, the business that surrounds them, and even what they are or what we think they are. All of that is changing all of the time. How can Microsoft's digital policy be essentially unchanged since Call of Duty 2 came out?
It's time for some real talk: It is my belief that the Xbox One is primarily a device designed so corporations can have relationships with each other: Comcast and Microsoft and Activision Blizzard and the NFL. It is a device created by a company that venerates the creation of devices, and will come packed with services that sound good to companies that like to sell services to attractive demographic targets.
The reason developers weren't really on stage except in prepackaged video segments prepared at the behest and for the benefit of these corporations is because Xbox One is not primarily about them.
This may actually turn out to be a winning strategy for Microsoft, no matter what the naysayers believe. I simply do not know. As people who believe in the system are quick to point out, Microsoft has a whole lot more market research and focus testing at its fingertips than we do, and me and people like me are not really its target audience.
But Microsoft's apparent attitude says something to me: I firmly believe the company is making a deliberate choice of a specific path. It is not an accident that the Xbox One is no more developer-friendly and, in fact, probably even less developer-friendly than the Xbox 360, which at least had Xbox Live Indie Games, as maligned as that service generally is.
I don't think Microsoft is closing the door only on the small games it seems to no longer care about. It is excluding itself from what is already a significant, vibrant part of the market. It is cutting off potentially world-changing games, not just the next beloved boutique "hit" that gets more traffic on Twitter than downloads. I don't know the terms of its deal with Mojang -- but not directly creating the Xbox 360 version of the game was a deliberate choice on the original developers' part. The developers of the next Minecraft may not want to have to go that route -- but they will have no choice.
And this, coupled with Sony's outright embracing of indies this past year, is why I'm investing in a PS4.
Listen to the small devs that published hits on the 360 last gen. Virtually all of them were put off by MS policies. Many of them are being actively courted by Sony. Go to the Sony blog and look at the posts by dozens of small/indie devs pitching their upcoming games side by side with announcements of larger games.
"The developers of the next Minecraft may not want to have to go that route -- but they will have no choice."
I don't think self publishing means what you think it means. I've "directly" created all of the games that we've published through Microsoft, and I've never even worked in AAA. Do you think that some attribute of Microsoft's current publishing model prevented Mojang from directly creating the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft? Help me understand, as I've seen an enormous spectrum of "what does self publishing mean to you?" this past week :).
Yeah, I'm a little confused what that minecraft commend had to do with the greater story.
As to your situation, your games are still published by Microsoft, right? Even if you aren't using a ton of services from them, you still can't make your games without some sort of deal in place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming Microsoft, as your publisher, is going to take some extra cut from profits aside from the normal platform cut that you would get with any self published title on some platform(i.e. valve takes a cut from steam sales, Apple with the app store, etc).
I think it's great that you've been able to have such a longstanding relationship with them, but I believe it also means that since your games are published, that's now one more slot out of a system where another studio's game might not get published. I think the biggest problem with Microsoft's handling of this is that they haven't clarified any of this, so the speculation gets more and more rampant. They need clear policies so we don't need to wonder what all this means.
Let me attempt to clarify. By bringing up Minecraft/Mojang I didn't mean to imply that you need to work with an external developer to get onto XBLA.
Obviously you understand the difference between publishing games yourself (via Xbox Live Indie Games) and having Microsoft publish you (on Xbox Live Arcade.)
I didn't go into Indie Games (the service) in depth because it's being deprecated and regardless of what Mattrick is saying, there is no replacement that anyone outside of MS knows anything about.
To get to Minecraft, my point is this: Mojang might have been happy to work with a partner to port the game to Xbox 360 and have Microsoft publish it. But the next Minecraft may not want to have to create an entirely separate console version of its game and it may not want to work with Microsoft to publish it, either.
What I am trying to illustrate is that Minecraft on XBLA is a different beast than Minecraft on PC. Separately, I'm making a point about how Mojang couldn't publish it on Xbox Live Arcade. My point is not that to publish via Microsoft that you need to work through a secondary developer. If that's the impression I gave -- oops. I'm aware that it absolutely isn't true.
Of course I'm well aware that your game, and Fez, and Dust, and any number of first-party published XBLA games were created by their developers, but they were also just that: published by Microsoft. If Microsoft didn't sign those games, they would have had to find another route onto XBLA via another publisher. Polytron and Humble Hearts could not be their own publishers.
Okay, that makes more sense. I didn't get that you were pointing out the porting work. I'm still not sure if I agree with that assessment, since you'll have to port any game, but I get how that affects early development of stuff like DayZ and Minecraft.
Its quite clear, that Microsoft bets on the large publishers. Thats the reason they have nothing to tell about Indies, because there isn't anything to tell. The size of the market has a limit, and they are clearly aiming to protect the share of the ~Top 20. If there is a $60 shooter and five $10 shooters, they know where the money would go in many cases, so they want to "somehow" limit that option.
In a sense, they go with the safe bet. If you look at the rest of the future market, with an "open" PS4 on the higher end; with a possible "steam box" and a flock of Ouya-alikes on the lower, the independent market will probably explode greatly during the lifetime of the XBone. Good for an "Indy ecosystem". But if you have to keep your AAA(A) boat afloat, you need more or less an guaranteed market place.
XBone is seemingly willing to offer this "guarantee" (or "option").
Unfortunately, being relatively closed didn't seem to hurt Microsoft last time round. Many of the indie darlings of the current gen - Braid, Minecraft, Bastion - ended up on the Xbox 360 one way or another and did very well for everyone involved. Sure, it was a hassle, but if it means Microsoft can preserve some of their expensive corporate deals, it could be a winning business strategy to make smaller developers jump through additional hoops.
To be devil's advocate... is it really a problem, as the article's title suggests?
AAA(A) games are huge, stunning, technically impressive, massively expensive, marketing-driven productions. Just like blockbuster movies.
And MS wants the XB to be the gaming equivalent of a visit to the cinema - an expensive, special experience for the enthusiast who wants to be wowed by the big productions, and will pay top dollar for that. It's a clear, intelligent strategy, chasing the big bucks.
But while not everyone goes to the cinema to watch the blockbusters, everyone watches TV. You know, TV... those less expensive, often quirkier, often more interesting productions that, usually, you watch for free, maybe supported by ads?
Well, that's where most of us, as developers, live. In the gaming equivalent of making TV shows, which our players often play for free. And a lot of us kind of like it here.
But if that's where we are, then why should we expect MS to give us space on their screens? TV companies don't expect the cinema chains to make space for their shows. No reason why MS should pander to us.
...?
(I'm not sure that is the whole story, but it's an alternative perspective....)
The whole media ecosystem is changing. Indy Cinema, for example, faces the hard truth that making a $5-10 million movie often doesn't cut it anymore against the barrage of blockbusters. The so called "counter programming" doesn't work much when your audience has now an $8 Netflix account. So many changed horses and produce more for pay/cable channels, and VideoOnDemand (VOD). You can see the acceptance of this by the amount of A/B-listers who are suddenly flocking to those. It just gives much more eyeballs than an independent movie that finally ends up in the wasteland of VOD releases.
Its probably not about finding your audience. Sony, Android, Steam, Mobile...there is enough places to find one. Its probably more about the underlying feeling, that you had a shot between two blockbusters to occupy the big screen. And now this very narrow shot got even more impossible then ever.
Maybe its very hard to get "screen space" against two toptier releases. But doesn't Sony want to give the Indies their own "screen"/"tab"? So this isn't even an option here.
Theaters do what they do because they are out of options. They cannot for the life of them attract many people ANY other way, unless they have a blockbuster.
That is not the case with consoles. With the advent of digital distribution, the market is full of multimillion selling games that are just not "enormous enough" for publishers, but are quite capable of attracting a big audience. Look at Steam.
So, although being successful, many games are in a Limbo - Microsoft cannot publish them all. For each 3 games of that "size", MS could make enough "blockbuster" money to justify adding them to their console.
Also, its interesting that almost everytime I go to the theater, my local Burger King gets more money from me than the actual theater. If you "attract" people to buy your console, it doesn't matter if it is because of a "small" Day Z kind of game, if they will spend on your other related services later.
That makes even more business sense than competing only on AAA that your competitor _also_ has, doesn't it? What is differentiating you?
@Kevin I don't think it is sustainable. First, costs are going to increase for XBox One. Perhaps they'll hold the line on cost of the game, but I doubt. I expect 65$ for AAA titles at least. Probably more likely to be 70$. The broad casual market is going to basically fall into Apple, Google or both's lap. Those people have had years of 1-5$ games to train them. Do you really expect them to shell out 65$ for the latest GTA or Madden? I don't.
Blockbuster movies work because they have such broad appeal. At the very least AAA games on the PS4/Xbox One are going to be very risky. At worst unprofitable.
Well, What you say here is the only opinion on XBOne which made me think and say they might have a problem. Most of the other stuff about Kinnect and privacy and MS's focus on none gamers and being an entertainment hub image are not real problems to me, The privacy thing surely is bigger than to be ignored even by a company that can ignore native sdk for an OS (WP7) and focus on an entertainment hub does not mean they leave their gamers in the cold.
But what you say is a closer system might mean many developers feel unhappy and even don't think of porting to the platform. It might be a problem as industry changes but for now, Microsoft experienced having indie games in XBLIG and they know better than anyone else how much money indie games can make for them and how much they should invest to publish those games (in guidance, QA ...)
I think they know the math of calculating this so in next few years it will not be a problem and as you pointed out, it might become the winning strategy for MS and many big publishers with ready to seel franchises feel much better about them but what will happen after PCs become more powerful and many features of the console become irrelevant and only innovative games can help, i don't thing they remain in a good position. If it would be the last generation of consoles and later on only PC, Mobile and alikes of steamboxes replace them however, maybe gaining as much as they can from big publisher in next few years is a good strategy. However with their entertainment hub features MS seem trying to change this fact.
The biggest problem to me with the self publishing on Xbox is the contracts you seem to have to get into with Microsoft to be published by them. Looking at the list of games published by them, I could only find 4 games that had come out for systems other than the PC and Xbox. One of those is a special case having been on the PS3 first, but the other 3 were huge hits. It was implied by someone who is marginally an insider to the industry that those 3 companies made enough money that they could *buy* their rights back from Microsoft and publish on other non-MS platforms.
That leads me to think that it could be a trap door for marginally successful games and prevent further success that might be found on other platforms. I'm glad that Sony has come around this time and will hopefully give small developers a better home.
Microsoft is taking a departure here. They have always been about developers, developers, developers. Even XBLA was indie support (albeit still limited) before the whole mobile/casual/social explosion. From .NET to XNA to giving developers tools (VS), they are forgetting here in such a strange time to do so, when indie developers are making games more fun than studios. I thought for sure with the changing small team landscape of game development that they would be a leader in indie development. Every other platform will beat them. Indie game development and smaller/medium studios, locking them out ruins some of the fun that is coming back to games and bringing it to arcade like, anything goes gameplay/game design. Microsoft, please change on this or else this is the first Microsoft console I won't own. I can't believe that Microsoft would block out possible fun on their console and lose out on developer/indie hardware sales that have fueled mobile and will fuel new consoles like OUYA/Steambox that do so.
@Jed Hm... I just paused here... Yeah, you are probably right, it is sane to take a step back.
But who would be ok with the "message" _they_ left in the air. MS is either cathartic towards digital distribution or they are almost willingly creating controversy.
That's a lot of text based on a little bit of info. Why is everyone extrapolating so much based on sound bite sized snippets of info. I guess people just want to talk about something, but the best bet is to wait a couple of more weeks until E3 and Build before passing judgment or saying indies are going to have a problem. :\
How is Microsoft's position fundamentally different than Sony's? The big "Indie games" on PS3 (like Journey and The Unfinished Swan) were published by Sony, just like the big indie games on Xbox are published by Microsoft. At the very least, wait until the details are known before determining if something is a problem or not.
"Focusing on that symbolic gesture obscures a more important truth: you don't have to be Jonathan Blow to publish your game on Sony (and Nintendo!) platforms with a minimum of fuss, right now. With Microsoft, you cannot."
Just because Sony funded the studios that produced Journey and The Unfinished Swan and published them does not mean that all indie games released on Sony platforms are published by Sony.
Are you implying that you thought (a) they were, or (b) the only indie games on Sony platforms are Journey and The Unfinished Swan? Either way, they're not, and they're not.
Except that the fourth paragraph is speculation at best, and an outright falsehood at worst. You can self-publish on Microsoft Xbox360 right now through the Indie Games channel. Nothing has been announced on how that might work on the Xbox One. Nothing in Microsoft's announcement offers anything different than what Sony has told us.
And if you think that self-publishing to PSN is the same as having Sony publish your Indie Game to PSN, more power to you. Most do not for some very significant reasons.
Of course operating as an external developer, potentially totally self-funding, and publishing yourself is not much like working as an internal developer, getting totally funded and supported in tech, marketing, PR, and even collaboration with Sony Worldwide Studios developers. I would be rather silly to think it is the same. So I don't. :D
I don't think that recognizing this in any way undermines my point, and I don't think drawing a false equivalency between XBLIG and "not being thatgamecompany" scores you any points. And that's about all I have to say about that.
Facepalm. Seriously. You are the one trying making that false equivalence, not me. I've pointed out that both Sony and MS have tiered levels of indie support, and that we don't know the whole details of that support for either company on the next console. Have I spelled it out clearly enough yet? Read every one of my replies. That's the same thing I've said over and over again.
I don't have good things to say about Xbone. Because it's nothing but contradiction and, "Don't worry, they'll be more clear soon." statements. This is why you reveal your console 2 years before launch. They only have months to get the right message out. E3 or bust. That's MS's stance.
Christian: Agreed with the points on MS. Indie fare plays a role, if not in the profit equation, then at least in the perception of having a wide variety of fare. And to Kevin's point, it's fine to offer a console that says "we don't offer that - we offer blockbuster run-of-the-mill fare only". The main cinema chains do this all the time right? I think it's a *very* risky decision at a time that indies are getting more attention from press and core gamers.
The main difference between XB Indie Games vs XBLA is that the bar for the former was much lower in terms of certification (self-cert, IIRC), ESRB rating (none), etc. Whereas XBLA required all that stuff and the hand-holding/oversight by MS required a bunch of overhead on their part which in turn capped how many of these they saw fit to do.
Sony has embraced high-profile indie content and chosen to give it this same level of oversight and a path onto the platform. That's good, and at this time appears to be addressing an opportunity MS is sleeping through. However, have they said they'd have the equivalent of XBL-Indie games? Or do they have that already? A path with no interaction required from Sony's part?
There's PlayStation Mobile, which allows developers to create games that work on Android devices as well as the Vita:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/191934/Sony_waives_fee_on_PlayS tation_Mobile_ development.php
But also Sony's policies are so different it's hard to directly compare them apples to apples:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189271/
Maybe it just comes down to the bitter hard fact that $10-$15 digital games just don't sell enough copies to be worth the effort. If they don't sell well, why should Microsoft care? If their data shows that half of all Xbox usage is entertainment apps, why wouldn't they herd their eyeballs to what brings them more success?
There seem to be a growing sense of entitlement to open ecosystems. People think all platforms should be open, just because it's the right thing to do. It seems to be definitely the right thing to do from a PR standpoint at least.
1. Some of them do (Minecraft, which MS only cared about AFTER it got popular. So they're cutting off the next Minecraft until and unless it gets popular)
2. This won't just be "$10-15 dollar games" in many senses down the road.
I'm willing to make a prediction. Microsoft will announce at E3 that in place of XBLIG, there will be the ability to write game apps to the "Windows core" side of Xbox One, using the same APIs and low-barrier publishing model as Windows 8 games. People everywhere will go "oh, duh. That should have been obvious to us."
I feel bad for indie devs I guess but the XBLA Indie Channel was full of absolute dog crap, blatant knock offs that weren't good, meme games that weren't any good, and dating games that ended up making the front page of Gamasutra and used as the poster child for everything wrong with the industry. It's hard to miss that.
If XBLA as a platform was going away, I'd be sad. But if you're telling me that the stuff that always sucked is getting the boot, well I kinda feel that's a good thing. I'm totally fine with only getting the best of the best, or at the least stuff good enough to pass a quality bar with a publisher.
I think this perception in regards to XBLIG is worthy of an article. Anyone who followed it closely saw some excellent titles that were some of the best this console generation (and that's not including Dust, that started out as an XBLIG game).
If you go to The Indie Gamer Chick's Leaderboard, you'll note over 100 excellent XBLIG titles: http://indiegamerchick.com/big-board/
You're going to have a bunch of crap along with the gems, at an unforgiving ratio, but this is true with any true self-publishing service.
The Xbox One is competing with PCs. A PC is equally powerful and about equally expensive, better made (e.g. repairable and upgradeable), with the same or better peripherals, most of the same new AAA games, plus older games, plus "indie" games, plus emulated really old games, plus easily pirated games, and without imposed software "upgrades" and subscription fees.
The only niches I see for the Xbox One are enthusiasts willing to buy a console as a tax, in order to play a certain platform-exclusive title, and the vanishing minority who want a game-playing platform but aren't computer-savvy enough to manage a PC.
Some elements of a PC will be equal, or nearly at launch. Some elements, as usual, will blow a console out of the water too. A couple years down the road when the PC hardware has taken more steps forward, consoles will still be locked into the same hardware, now (future tense) will be, as usual, lower tier hardware.
The industry wants to say the PC is dead and irrelevant. But what does it say that two of the biggest names in consoles are using heavily modified (if not at the base level, at the hardware configuration level) PC hardware.
people are really jumping the gun on this one. Xbox is a game console primarily. It will continue to be one, but at the same time, it wants to incorporate more aspects of the living room, including music and video. As I turn on my 360 however, I see the problems everyone is talking about. My game console lights up and what I get are several pages of advertising, music videos and film clips. Hard to find game content.
the real issue is, do people want microsoft in that role. i suspect the answer is no. Apple, as well as other, already provide similar services and are of similar quality but at lower cost. In fact, most of the services MS is offering, are already built in pretty much all TV's, Blu Ray Players etc. They are not really offering anything unique but, if we can use the last gen as an example, it will all come at a rate, 25% more expensive.
As such, MS has put itslef in an unusual position. Not marketing to gamers, their next gen console looks like hardware from a previous era, offering a central place in the home entertainment system, already occupied by Reciever units. In other words, its trying to fill a spot already filled and ignoring games.
As such, I am worried. The company has long lost its position as high tech inovators, many products have fallen far short of expectations, including Zune, windows 8, windows phones, windows tablets and Kinect, etc. Lack of imagination, lack of inovation and a predisposition towards monetization practises over quality of content has hurt microsoft.
Unfortuantly, all this speaks of a company that lacks a true creative vision. I have always been a fan of MS and the XBOX line however I find nothing encouraging from this years offering.
Christian Nutt said:
"It's time for some real talk: It is my belief that the Xbox One is primarily a device designed so corporations can have relationships with each other: Comcast and Microsoft and Activision Blizzard and the NFL."
This isn't the main point of your article so I won't spend a lot of time on this, I think this only reflects a piece of the puzzle here. MS wants to dominate the Living Room. If you look at the cultural relevance of today's living rooms, live sports and videogames has a lot to do with it, and so these are simply pieces of the puzzle, not the entire puzzle.
MS announced $1 billion invested in making new games for the One, the focus on gaming in certainly there, it's just not the only focus.
So while they are giving off the impression that they are serious about 1st and 3rd party titles, they are leaving a big question mark in regards to self-published games.
I suspect we'll know the full details at BUILD, but let's assume there's no self publishing model for the One. The great thing, and we all know this very well, is that MS has re-invented their console at various times. Before 2008, self-publishing on the 360 wasn't possible. After some planning and an update, we see Xbox Live "Community" Games (now known as "Indie Games", which coincidentally another example of Microsoft adapting to feedback).
Considering all this, it speaks to the importance of this article. Games made a person's bedroom is one thing, titles developed from independent PC developers is another...yet both stand to suffer from what we know now being MS's publishing model. It's an important point Mr. Nutt made that I feel is lost on many people, including Microsoft.
Another point Mr. Nutt made that begs repeating is MS's now archaic practices in regards to things like 3rd party servers. Now, in the past year we've seen MS open up to FTP, and no longer charging for game updates. These archaic practices are disappearing, but the One is a chance to offer a clean slate of modern requirements that no longer punish the publisher.
I don't know if it's bureaucracy or corporate structure but I get the impression that MS may not be agile or foresighted enough to implement change nowadays. We saw how Windows 8 beta feedback was not implemented until 8.1, for example. So (assuming that there is no self-publishing model) the question becomes how quickly MS can adapt to say, Apple releasing a TV/set-top box that allows users to download hundreds of thousands of Apps for use on their TV, prompting MS to have a self-publishing model for the One that they should have had all along.
One only needs to look at the tight-knit relationship Microsoft has developed with EA with regard to the XBox One to see what's between the lines here. I think it's more than reasonable to assume that a certain amount of EA influence will be reflected in this next iteration of the XBLA model.
What was the primary platform for Minecraft before Xbox? Windows. That is a Microsoft platform too. As long as the most likely platform for non-Xbox games is also your platform this isn't a problem for them right? Now if it is an Apple or Sony platform then they will start to have an issue. But as long as the other platform is also theirs it is not an issue for them.
It is also conceivable that the Windows 8 App Store will run in some sort mode on Xbox One, that is a pure guess on my part, it is also something they could enable post launch if need be.
Listen to the small devs that published hits on the 360 last gen. Virtually all of them were put off by MS policies. Many of them are being actively courted by Sony. Go to the Sony blog and look at the posts by dozens of small/indie devs pitching their upcoming games side by side with announcements of larger games.
I don't think self publishing means what you think it means. I've "directly" created all of the games that we've published through Microsoft, and I've never even worked in AAA. Do you think that some attribute of Microsoft's current publishing model prevented Mojang from directly creating the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft? Help me understand, as I've seen an enormous spectrum of "what does self publishing mean to you?" this past week :).
As to your situation, your games are still published by Microsoft, right? Even if you aren't using a ton of services from them, you still can't make your games without some sort of deal in place. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming Microsoft, as your publisher, is going to take some extra cut from profits aside from the normal platform cut that you would get with any self published title on some platform(i.e. valve takes a cut from steam sales, Apple with the app store, etc).
I think it's great that you've been able to have such a longstanding relationship with them, but I believe it also means that since your games are published, that's now one more slot out of a system where another studio's game might not get published. I think the biggest problem with Microsoft's handling of this is that they haven't clarified any of this, so the speculation gets more and more rampant. They need clear policies so we don't need to wonder what all this means.
Obviously you understand the difference between publishing games yourself (via Xbox Live Indie Games) and having Microsoft publish you (on Xbox Live Arcade.)
I didn't go into Indie Games (the service) in depth because it's being deprecated and regardless of what Mattrick is saying, there is no replacement that anyone outside of MS knows anything about.
To get to Minecraft, my point is this: Mojang might have been happy to work with a partner to port the game to Xbox 360 and have Microsoft publish it. But the next Minecraft may not want to have to create an entirely separate console version of its game and it may not want to work with Microsoft to publish it, either.
What I am trying to illustrate is that Minecraft on XBLA is a different beast than Minecraft on PC. Separately, I'm making a point about how Mojang couldn't publish it on Xbox Live Arcade. My point is not that to publish via Microsoft that you need to work through a secondary developer. If that's the impression I gave -- oops. I'm aware that it absolutely isn't true.
Of course I'm well aware that your game, and Fez, and Dust, and any number of first-party published XBLA games were created by their developers, but they were also just that: published by Microsoft. If Microsoft didn't sign those games, they would have had to find another route onto XBLA via another publisher. Polytron and Humble Hearts could not be their own publishers.
In a sense, they go with the safe bet. If you look at the rest of the future market, with an "open" PS4 on the higher end; with a possible "steam box" and a flock of Ouya-alikes on the lower, the independent market will probably explode greatly during the lifetime of the XBone. Good for an "Indy ecosystem". But if you have to keep your AAA(A) boat afloat, you need more or less an guaranteed market place.
XBone is seemingly willing to offer this "guarantee" (or "option").
AAA(A) games are huge, stunning, technically impressive, massively expensive, marketing-driven productions. Just like blockbuster movies.
And MS wants the XB to be the gaming equivalent of a visit to the cinema - an expensive, special experience for the enthusiast who wants to be wowed by the big productions, and will pay top dollar for that. It's a clear, intelligent strategy, chasing the big bucks.
But while not everyone goes to the cinema to watch the blockbusters, everyone watches TV. You know, TV... those less expensive, often quirkier, often more interesting productions that, usually, you watch for free, maybe supported by ads?
Well, that's where most of us, as developers, live. In the gaming equivalent of making TV shows, which our players often play for free. And a lot of us kind of like it here.
But if that's where we are, then why should we expect MS to give us space on their screens? TV companies don't expect the cinema chains to make space for their shows. No reason why MS should pander to us.
...?
(I'm not sure that is the whole story, but it's an alternative perspective....)
Its probably not about finding your audience. Sony, Android, Steam, Mobile...there is enough places to find one. Its probably more about the underlying feeling, that you had a shot between two blockbusters to occupy the big screen. And now this very narrow shot got even more impossible then ever.
Maybe its very hard to get "screen space" against two toptier releases. But doesn't Sony want to give the Indies their own "screen"/"tab"? So this isn't even an option here.
That is not the case with consoles. With the advent of digital distribution, the market is full of multimillion selling games that are just not "enormous enough" for publishers, but are quite capable of attracting a big audience. Look at Steam.
So, although being successful, many games are in a Limbo - Microsoft cannot publish them all. For each 3 games of that "size", MS could make enough "blockbuster" money to justify adding them to their console.
Also, its interesting that almost everytime I go to the theater, my local Burger King gets more money from me than the actual theater. If you "attract" people to buy your console, it doesn't matter if it is because of a "small" Day Z kind of game, if they will spend on your other related services later.
That makes even more business sense than competing only on AAA that your competitor _also_ has, doesn't it? What is differentiating you?
Blockbuster movies work because they have such broad appeal. At the very least AAA games on the PS4/Xbox One are going to be very risky. At worst unprofitable.
And that doesn't seem very sustainable.
But what you say is a closer system might mean many developers feel unhappy and even don't think of porting to the platform. It might be a problem as industry changes but for now, Microsoft experienced having indie games in XBLIG and they know better than anyone else how much money indie games can make for them and how much they should invest to publish those games (in guidance, QA ...)
I think they know the math of calculating this so in next few years it will not be a problem and as you pointed out, it might become the winning strategy for MS and many big publishers with ready to seel franchises feel much better about them but what will happen after PCs become more powerful and many features of the console become irrelevant and only innovative games can help, i don't thing they remain in a good position. If it would be the last generation of consoles and later on only PC, Mobile and alikes of steamboxes replace them however, maybe gaining as much as they can from big publisher in next few years is a good strategy. However with their entertainment hub features MS seem trying to change this fact.
That leads me to think that it could be a trap door for marginally successful games and prevent further success that might be found on other platforms. I'm glad that Sony has come around this time and will hopefully give small developers a better home.
The new trend in tech seems to approach the unknown with cynicism and anger instead of hopefulness or optimism.
But who would be ok with the "message" _they_ left in the air. MS is either cathartic towards digital distribution or they are almost willingly creating controversy.
"Focusing on that symbolic gesture obscures a more important truth: you don't have to be Jonathan Blow to publish your game on Sony (and Nintendo!) platforms with a minimum of fuss, right now. With Microsoft, you cannot."
Just because Sony funded the studios that produced Journey and The Unfinished Swan and published them does not mean that all indie games released on Sony platforms are published by Sony.
Are you implying that you thought (a) they were, or (b) the only indie games on Sony platforms are Journey and The Unfinished Swan? Either way, they're not, and they're not.
I don't think that recognizing this in any way undermines my point, and I don't think drawing a false equivalency between XBLIG and "not being thatgamecompany" scores you any points. And that's about all I have to say about that.
The main difference between XB Indie Games vs XBLA is that the bar for the former was much lower in terms of certification (self-cert, IIRC), ESRB rating (none), etc. Whereas XBLA required all that stuff and the hand-holding/oversight by MS required a bunch of overhead on their part which in turn capped how many of these they saw fit to do.
Sony has embraced high-profile indie content and chosen to give it this same level of oversight and a path onto the platform. That's good, and at this time appears to be addressing an opportunity MS is sleeping through. However, have they said they'd have the equivalent of XBL-Indie games? Or do they have that already? A path with no interaction required from Sony's part?
There's PlayStation Mobile, which allows developers to create games that work on Android devices as well as the Vita:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/191934/Sony_waives_fee_on_PlayS tation_Mobile_
development.php
But also Sony's policies are so different it's hard to directly compare them apples to apples:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/189271/
There seem to be a growing sense of entitlement to open ecosystems. People think all platforms should be open, just because it's the right thing to do. It seems to be definitely the right thing to do from a PR standpoint at least.
1. Some of them do (Minecraft, which MS only cared about AFTER it got popular. So they're cutting off the next Minecraft until and unless it gets popular)
2. This won't just be "$10-15 dollar games" in many senses down the road.
If XBLA as a platform was going away, I'd be sad. But if you're telling me that the stuff that always sucked is getting the boot, well I kinda feel that's a good thing. I'm totally fine with only getting the best of the best, or at the least stuff good enough to pass a quality bar with a publisher.
If you go to The Indie Gamer Chick's Leaderboard, you'll note over 100 excellent XBLIG titles: http://indiegamerchick.com/big-board/
You're going to have a bunch of crap along with the gems, at an unforgiving ratio, but this is true with any true self-publishing service.
The only niches I see for the Xbox One are enthusiasts willing to buy a console as a tax, in order to play a certain platform-exclusive title, and the vanishing minority who want a game-playing platform but aren't computer-savvy enough to manage a PC.
The industry wants to say the PC is dead and irrelevant. But what does it say that two of the biggest names in consoles are using heavily modified (if not at the base level, at the hardware configuration level) PC hardware.
the real issue is, do people want microsoft in that role. i suspect the answer is no. Apple, as well as other, already provide similar services and are of similar quality but at lower cost. In fact, most of the services MS is offering, are already built in pretty much all TV's, Blu Ray Players etc. They are not really offering anything unique but, if we can use the last gen as an example, it will all come at a rate, 25% more expensive.
As such, MS has put itslef in an unusual position. Not marketing to gamers, their next gen console looks like hardware from a previous era, offering a central place in the home entertainment system, already occupied by Reciever units. In other words, its trying to fill a spot already filled and ignoring games.
As such, I am worried. The company has long lost its position as high tech inovators, many products have fallen far short of expectations, including Zune, windows 8, windows phones, windows tablets and Kinect, etc. Lack of imagination, lack of inovation and a predisposition towards monetization practises over quality of content has hurt microsoft.
Unfortuantly, all this speaks of a company that lacks a true creative vision. I have always been a fan of MS and the XBOX line however I find nothing encouraging from this years offering.
"It's time for some real talk: It is my belief that the Xbox One is primarily a device designed so corporations can have relationships with each other: Comcast and Microsoft and Activision Blizzard and the NFL."
This isn't the main point of your article so I won't spend a lot of time on this, I think this only reflects a piece of the puzzle here. MS wants to dominate the Living Room. If you look at the cultural relevance of today's living rooms, live sports and videogames has a lot to do with it, and so these are simply pieces of the puzzle, not the entire puzzle.
MS announced $1 billion invested in making new games for the One, the focus on gaming in certainly there, it's just not the only focus.
So while they are giving off the impression that they are serious about 1st and 3rd party titles, they are leaving a big question mark in regards to self-published games.
I suspect we'll know the full details at BUILD, but let's assume there's no self publishing model for the One. The great thing, and we all know this very well, is that MS has re-invented their console at various times. Before 2008, self-publishing on the 360 wasn't possible. After some planning and an update, we see Xbox Live "Community" Games (now known as "Indie Games", which coincidentally another example of Microsoft adapting to feedback).
Considering all this, it speaks to the importance of this article. Games made a person's bedroom is one thing, titles developed from independent PC developers is another...yet both stand to suffer from what we know now being MS's publishing model. It's an important point Mr. Nutt made that I feel is lost on many people, including Microsoft.
Another point Mr. Nutt made that begs repeating is MS's now archaic practices in regards to things like 3rd party servers. Now, in the past year we've seen MS open up to FTP, and no longer charging for game updates. These archaic practices are disappearing, but the One is a chance to offer a clean slate of modern requirements that no longer punish the publisher.
I don't know if it's bureaucracy or corporate structure but I get the impression that MS may not be agile or foresighted enough to implement change nowadays. We saw how Windows 8 beta feedback was not implemented until 8.1, for example. So (assuming that there is no self-publishing model) the question becomes how quickly MS can adapt to say, Apple releasing a TV/set-top box that allows users to download hundreds of thousands of Apps for use on their TV, prompting MS to have a self-publishing model for the One that they should have had all along.
It is also conceivable that the Windows 8 App Store will run in some sort mode on Xbox One, that is a pure guess on my part, it is also something they could enable post launch if need be.