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."

Comments

Very tempting

[SuperKendall]

If it gives me programatic access to the video stream as they were showing in some of the demos... it would be very interesting indeed.

If it's just games, that's nice for a lot of people but not as exciting in terms of something really new.

Re:Very tempting

[Sir_Sri]

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.

Re:Very tempting

[exomondo]

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.

Re:In the voice of a British peasant

[MarkusQ]

Oh, thank you, sir! For the privilege of accessing the hardware I have paid you money for, I am forever grateful!

This is the sort of entitlist mentality that shows how out of touch some people in this community are.

So objecting to "you bought it but we still get to control how you use it" is somehow "entitlist"?

I agree people shouldn't buy shackled hardware in the first place, but that doesn't mean that it's in any way ethical to sell it. And claiming that the public has made an informed decision by choosing heavily marketed closed systems over the essentially unmarketed open alternatives doesn't pass the laugh test.

-- MarkusQ

Re:In the voice of a British peasant

[steelfood]

It's elitist because GGP is suggesting buying the PS4 instead. After all the crap Sony pulled, I wouldn't trust them either...

Yep!

[Knuckx]

On the Xbox 360, you can use a retail console as a (limited) devkit for developing Xbox Live Indie Games with XNA. This requires two things: XBLIG Membership attached to your Xbox Live account, and the development/debug tool installed on the Xbox 360 (XNA Game Studio Connect). XNA Game Studio Connect requires you to be signed in to Xbox Live with an account with XBLIG membership before it will launch unsigned code. If at any time during execution of unsigned code your network connection drops, or you sign out of Xbox Live, the hypervisor/debugger forcefully resets the console.

I am gonna guess that you are 100% correct in your guess of retail XB1's behavior when running unsigned code - at least going from my use of XBLIG/XNA Game Studio Connect.

Urk

[SuperKendall]

If at any time during execution of unsigned code your network connection drops, or you sign out of Xbox Live, the hypervisor/debugger forcefully resets the console.

Well that sounds really un-appealing, I have to say... I develop a lot of times in places where I have spotty connectivity. I'll for sure wait and see what reports are like in developing for the system before I spring for one...