Publishers Pressuring MS To Push Indies From Xbox Live?

R. Dobbs writes "Microsoft has reportedly drastically reduced the amount of indie titles it's going to allow on its Live Arcade service — but no such limits have been placed on material from major publishers. Have the publishers themselves been pushing this agenda? And what will it mean for indies? Quoting: 'More and more indie developers are being created, bucking the trend of working for the blockbuster-sized titles of many publishers and opting to control their own development and keep their IPs. This is likely becoming more and more of a concern to major publishers, who seem — especially in ZeniMax's recent purchase of id Software and EA's combination of Bioware and Mythic, as well as Warner Bros. purchase of Midway's IPs and studios — to be doing everything they can to consolidate their power and lock down all the available resources.' When questioned, Microsoft released a statement saying that they're 'a great supporter of independent game development.'"

Comments

It's a CONSPIRACY! Or... not.

[girlintraining]

Umm, guys? Indie titles get crapped on because they're small, not because of some conspiracy. Large businesses simply don't want to expend the resources and time to make things available for the "little guys", because the net return is so much lower. I mean, hey -- if I can corner 90% of the market by setting up my distribution platform to, say, seven businesses, why should I make that same effort fifty or a hundred times more just to get that extra 10%? I think, if I were in that position, I'd just move on to the next thing and save my money. And yes, it's all electronic. That doesn't make it zero-cost; There's administrative costs to everything and those costs don't go up in a linear fashion as you add more members.

Re:It's a CONSPIRACY! Or... not.

[gandhi_2]

xbl has done a pretty good job of streamlining the indie-game process. They've made it simple enough that allowing indie-devs to publish games equates to almost NO EXTRA WORK on the part of MS. Which is smart.

Of course there are admin costs, but dev fees and sales quite handily make up for that. The fact is, putting a limit on the number of indie games is an active act, requiring work. The end result can only have lead to lower indie sales.

I agree with you that some people look for the conspiracy everywhere, but in this case MS took an action that would lead to less indie sales. I can only think that was in response to some external stimuli (major game publishers).

Re:It's a CONSPIRACY! Or... not.

[drinkypoo]

I feel like you've missed the mark substantially. The problem isn't with the idea that these are conspiracy theories, but with the idea that a conspiracy theory is automatically flawed. In reality, any time two people get together to bone at least one other person out of something, it's a conspiracy.

Don't attack the idea that Microsoft's plans for world domination are conspiracy theories; that is precisely what they are. However, they are also well-founded.

It would not surprise me at all if Microsoft were deliberately throttling game submissions to serve first-string developers. The most successful indie developers will have the opportunity to be sucked up into the system that pays Microsoft a fat licensing fee for every title sold. Microsoft isn't in business to help indie gaming, they're in business to make a profit. The indie games available on Live are only there so long as they support the bottom line in some way.

Re:Well

[omeomi]

Unfortunately, XBox Live games are way easier to produce--using the free XNA toolkit--than Wii or PS3 games. You can make a game for both PC and XBox Live at the same time, with the same codebase...

Independents have lost

[Norsefire]

The only thing they can do now is

buy a spaceship, recruit a crew and do random jobs about the galaxy. Get attacked by criminals and savages, harbor known fugitives.

But they'll still be flying.

Re:As usual..

[Xest]

As usual a drama is being made out of nothing, with a bit of Microsoft blame added in for the sake of hating Microsoft.

Microsoft will publish whichever games are going to net them most profit, just like any other company would. If large companies have more resources to produce better titles than indies, that sucks for indies, but it's not really Microsoft's problem. They still provide the community games option for titles who want to publish but don't make the cut for a full arcade title.

Microsoft's primary goal is to produce profit, it's secondary goal is providing a good service to it's users. The latter can of course effect the former. But here's the real problem, publish indie games for the sake of publishing indies games purely so indies get a fair share of the market regardless of equality fails in both respects - it means less profit, and a worse selection of games for users if better games by big publishers are pushed back to make way for lower quality games by indies.

With XNA GSE and Community games Microsoft's gone out of it's way more than any other company with involvement in the games industry (with the exception of perhaps Garagegames) to make sure anyone can publish. At the end of the day, indie games that beat big publisher games still get published - Braid being a good example, but Live Arcade being flooded with the crap that comes between Braid and the likes just for the sake of someone's arbitrary assumption that there should be some balanced ratio between big publisher games and indie games is a stupid idea. If anything I'd argue too much gets published to Live Arcade as is, there's simply too much on there to search through now, it's no suprise that competition is getting tougher and the people with more resources and more professional experience are beating the others out then.

Being an indie developer doesn't give you some magical right to be given an artificial advantage in the marketplace. You still have to compete on your merits.

I knew it

[Anonymous Coward]

MS are the reason Firefly was canceled.

Re:Well

[Toonol]

Unfortunately, the 360 is FAR easier to develop for. That and PC are almost the only possible choice for the independent developer... unless they want to do iTunes apps, or something. The Wii and PS3 just aren't really approachable except by a select few.

I would LOVE for the Wii to open up a marketplace (something much bigger than its WiiWare category), but I don't think it's something Nintendo would do.

Thank you everyone who made this possible

[pizzach]

Looks like game developers have finally grown big enough to start considering building their own RIAA/MPAA. I just want to say thanks to the people who only buy games that they have heard of through commercials of or only buy sequels. I also want to thank the graphics whores who only support games that a mega company could afford to make. Without you guys, none of this would be possible. (This also counts for presidential elections etc...)

Re:Most Indie Titles Suck

[Sc4Freak]

I'm a developer who has had a game published on Xbox Live Community Games.

Although this isn't so much of a problem for XBLA, I think it is completely true that there are far too many low-quality titles flooding Xbox Live Community Games. The modicum of good games are being swamped by a flood of ill-designed, terribly-executed, low-quality games (and in many cases, "games"). The review process for publishing Xbox Live Community Games is designed to weed out technical issues; it's actually forbidden for a reviewer to reject a game submission because "he didn't like it". The reason for this is because the review process is done by fellow developers, and allowing subjective judgements in the review process introduces a conflict of interest.

As developers, we've time and time again asked Microsoft to introduce a user rating system, where the users of the service (and ultimately, our customers) will be able to give games ratings and allow for user recommendations. This should give power back to the users to weed out the bad games and allow the real gems of the service to shine.

As far as I can tell, Microsoft decided to actually listen to us. About a month and a half ago they announced that user ratings are coming to Xbox Live. From what I've heard, these features should be arriving in the coming months - so maybe once that happens things will get a little better.