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This is great! hopefully it can deliver on the promise that XBox Live Indie Games never quite delivered on ... which is to say giving indies a channel to the sa

This is great! hopefully it can deliver on the promise that XBox Live Indie Games never quite delivered on ... which is to say giving indies a channel to the same marketplace, on the same terms, as everyone else. The problem with XBLIG was always that the indie games were always in a different menu and never quite given the same opportunities as other titles (ie. XBLA had achievements, etc.).

pixie_ 14y ago
To be fair I've played a lot of indie games on xbox live and a lot of them feel like their based off of a bad programming tutorial. It's fun to play them and go WTF why, definitely not something they should promote to a larger audience. It looks like Valve is solving the problem by having their customers go through the indie game bin and pull out the ones that are actually good.
- sodafountan 14y ago
  You make is sound like all Xbox Live Indie Games are bad. The problem with that service is that which is mentioned above, not enough recognition as "official" apps for the Xbox 360. I'm convinced that if developers where given more responsibility then they would act upon that higher responsibility accordingly. As it is now developers really don't have much of an incentive to make decent games for the platform. But Valve's way of doing this seems to be a good one, let the customer's decide what gets on Steam, you really can't go wrong with that strategy.
  - CodeCube 14y ago
    Well said. Also, the very fact that the service allowed lower quality games is actually a good thing ... many game developers made well received titles on XNA and have moved on to bigger and better things (see Ska Studios, and Zeboyd Games for two examples).
    - sodafountan 14y ago
      Very true, in a way Xbox Live Indie Games is a lot like the Android Market Place. You have a wide variety of apps that are really very good but you also have a lot of complete crap. If Microsoft would ever actually follow through with it's experiments then it could really become a true power house again, it seems that Microsoft tends to innovate but then burn out on their innovations (keep in mind that Indie Games launched in 2008, right around the same time that the Android Market Place was really blowing up). I just wish Microsoft would give Indie Games the attention it desperately needs.
- sukuriant 14y ago
  And then some of them at that "bad programming tutorial" level somehow end up really entertaining :D e.g.: I made a game with zombies in it (yes, this is a shameless plug, nope I didn't write it, nope I don't know who did; but... for a dollar, it's some of the most fun I've had on xbox and it is a VERY rudamentary concept)
TillE 14y ago
It also acts as Steam's XBLIG equivalent for games that haven't (yet) been approved for Steam proper, which I don't think is a bad thing. As long as they allow developers to link to their own downloads and homepages, this is going to be a huge opportunity for smaller indies to market themselves, with a Steam brand name and a simple voting mechanism. As a developer of niche games, I'm pretty excited about it.

pixie_ 14y ago

To be fair I've played a lot of indie games on xbox live and a lot of them feel like their based off of a bad programming tutorial. It's fun to play them and go WTF why, definitely not something they should promote to a larger audience. It looks like Valve is solving the problem by having their customers go through the indie game bin and pull out the ones that are actually good.

sodafountan 14y ago
You make is sound like all Xbox Live Indie Games are bad. The problem with that service is that which is mentioned above, not enough recognition as "official" apps for the Xbox 360. I'm convinced that if developers where given more responsibility then they would act upon that higher responsibility accordingly. As it is now developers really don't have much of an incentive to make decent games for the platform. But Valve's way of doing this seems to be a good one, let the customer's decide what gets on Steam, you really can't go wrong with that strategy.
- CodeCube 14y ago
  Well said. Also, the very fact that the service allowed lower quality games is actually a good thing ... many game developers made well received titles on XNA and have moved on to bigger and better things (see Ska Studios, and Zeboyd Games for two examples).
  - sodafountan 14y ago
    Very true, in a way Xbox Live Indie Games is a lot like the Android Market Place. You have a wide variety of apps that are really very good but you also have a lot of complete crap. If Microsoft would ever actually follow through with it's experiments then it could really become a true power house again, it seems that Microsoft tends to innovate but then burn out on their innovations (keep in mind that Indie Games launched in 2008, right around the same time that the Android Market Place was really blowing up). I just wish Microsoft would give Indie Games the attention it desperately needs.
sukuriant 14y ago
And then some of them at that "bad programming tutorial" level somehow end up really entertaining :D e.g.: I made a game with zombies in it (yes, this is a shameless plug, nope I didn't write it, nope I don't know who did; but... for a dollar, it's some of the most fun I've had on xbox and it is a VERY rudamentary concept)

TillE 14y ago

It also acts as Steam's XBLIG equivalent for games that haven't (yet) been approved for Steam proper, which I don't think is a bad thing. As long as they allow developers to link to their own downloads and homepages, this is going to be a huge opportunity for smaller indies to market themselves, with a Steam brand name and a simple voting mechanism. As a developer of niche games, I'm pretty excited about it.