Indie

With the whole pandemic going on, companies aren’t going to be able to host demos at large gatherings such as PAX or E3. They have decided to do a virtual …
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In this era of the remaster, many games we see really aren’t that old, so it’s good to see that Lizardcube and DotEmu have gone a bit further back in …
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Xbox will be highlighting a variety of indie titles throughout May with their ID@Xbox Game Fest. The Game Fest will be celebrating a select number of independent game developers on …
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In case you missed the recent news, the first Microsoft Garage title has been rather sneakily released into the wild as a free download on Xbox One. Voice Commander is a single-screen shooter in the style of the arcade classic Asteroids, with a few notable twists which between them make the most of the Kinect technology and add an additional layer of strategy. Players are invited to defend their home planet from wave after wave of alien attackers, whilst the titular voice commands are used to deploy defensive structures in specific quadrants or to deploy smart bombs and other secondary weapons.

Microsoft Garage games are made by various Microsoft Studio employees in their spare time, and Voice Commander has set the bar pretty high considering that it’s free to download. Currently, it can only be located via a Bing search on your Xbox One, and your console must also be set to the US region. Non-US players can still download and play Voice Commander, but will need to change their home region to US, download the game and then change back.

For more on Voice Commander, check out the gameplay video after the jump.

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Roundabout, a crazy game about driving a spinning limousine through a city full of obstacles while picking up items and accomplishing various tasks (and probably crushing a lot of …
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Looking to get your next-gen indie fix? According to an Edge Online interview with ID@Xbox Director Chris Charla, you might not have to wait too long. “I think it …
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Chris Charla, the director of ID@Xbox, has announced the first wave of ID@Xbox developers set to self-publish on Xbox One starting in 2014. The list ranges from large AAA developers to smaller one and two-man teams, with a host of XBLA veterans set to join the fray.

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Chris Charla, director of Independent Developers for Xbox (or ID@Xbox), spoke with Game Informer recently and talked about why indie developers should consider self-publishing on the Xbox …
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Update 2: In a second statement released to Kotaku today, Xbox Chief Product Officer Marc Whitten confirmed an earlier report by Game Informer that while all Xbox Ones will …
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Yesterday, in an interview with Official Xbox Magazine, Lionhead Studios’ Creative Director, Gary Carr, spoke of Microsoft’s commitment to courting indie developers on the Xbox One. He describes Microsoft as “very passionate” about building strong relationships with Indies, noting that the gaming business’ future is in jeopardy without independent developers.

Gary adds that while the big players like Sony, Microsoft, and Amazon “kind of hold it all together,” independent development is a major force behind innovation, and both big and small players alike can co-exist. Carr’s comments regarding an upcoming presentation from Phil Harrison could be interpreted as a hint that Microsoft may be re-evaluating its approach to publishing on Xbox One.

In a separate interview, Phil Spencer also discussed some of the challenges faced by both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One with regards to game publishing. The ease of development and publishing for the Xbox 360 has been both a blessing and a curse for the console. There have been some immensely high-profile, high-quality releases from a number of independent developers, but much of the Indie marketplace has also transformed into a dumping ground for woefully mediocre titles and clones of clones of clones.

At this point, so far into the console’s lifecycle, it can be difficult to reliably identify Indie games worth playing, and this has led to a significant shift in Microsoft’s publishing strategy for the Xbox One. Thankfully, Phil Spencer is aware of the parallels to Apple’s heavily-curated, closed ecosystem, and addresses them to an extent.

However, the goals are still potentially antithetical to each other; in order to attract good developers who create great content, a market cannot or should not heavily restrict access to its publishing tools. Conversely, a completely open market, where everyone can publish nearly anything, can also lead to a weakened content ecosystem, suffering from the same quality bloat seen in the Xbox 360’s Indie marketplace.

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