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Microsoft Will Allow Indie Self-publishing, Debugging On Retail Xbox One
tlhIngan writes "Microsoft was the last platform manufacturer to require that all games go through publishers, a much hated policy. Indeed, their approval process was one of the harshest around. But now Microsoft will allow indie developers to self publish, and allow retail Xbox One units to serve as developer consoles. Previously, self-publishing developers were relegated to the 'Xbox Live Indie Arcade' section, as well as developer consoles often costing upwards of $10,000 with special requirements and NDAs. This puts Microsoft's Xbox One more in line with Apple's App Store, including Microsoft's new promise of a 14-day turnaround for approvals. Microsoft's retail debug console system is to work similarly to Apple's — that is, to run pre-release code, the individual consoles used have to be registered with Microsoft."
If it's just games, that's nice for a lot of people but not as exciting in terms of something really new.
I don't think it's supposed to be new. It's aimed at indie devs and people like me who teach game development where we cannot justify real development kits to be handed to students (what could possibly go wrong? Oh.. right... students).
The thing is, the Xbox3 is basically a PC, so for anything really 'new' you have PC development to demo it, and then pitch that to someone who has money to let you buy a development kit if you want it. If you just want to make a game, this works well.
I can't see why anyone would bother with any of the new consoles. All of them are locked down, and all of them have at least some DRM.
Thing is if what you're interested in is playing games - which is what most people who buy games consoles are after - then it's not that much different on the PC, the games publishers are the ones that force the DRM and the platform is irrelevant, just look at EA and Ubisoft games on PC. If you're interested in tinkering (which let's face it, relatively not many people are) then you'd use a PC or an Ouya.
So I can see why people would bother with consoles, 'locked down' and DRM isn't going to be a problem for most people - check out the popularity of iOS devices as an example.