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Xbox One: will self-publishing allow indies to flourish?(Guardian Web Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Microsoft reversing on unpopular Xbox One decisions has become a rather familiar story. In June, the company backtracked on its digital distribution plans, abandoning a system that would limit pre-owned sales of physical games, and that would require the daily online authentication of every Xbox One unit. Now, Xbox business VP Marc Whitten has released a statement seemingly revolutionising the console's approach to indie developers. "Our vision is that every person can be a creator," he declared to Engadget. "That every Xbox One can be used for development. That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE. We'll have more details on the programme and the timeline at Gamescom in August." Originally it appeared that Microsoft would not allow self-publishing, meaning that small studios would have to work with larger publishers in order to release Xbox One games. It's an archaic model, a hark back to the days before the smartphone platforms, where only cursory approval structures are in place, and where studios are largely free to set pricing structures and monetisation strategies. And with Sony promising a robust self-publishing model for PlayStation 4 (while carefully positioning itself as the indie platform of choice), something was always likely to give. Responses from the indie community have so far been guarded – mostly due to the lack of concrete information. Veteran developer Byron Atkinson-Jones of Xiotex Studios, wonders whether this is simply a repackaging of an earlier strategy. "I'm suspicious," he says. "Xbox One has a Metro interface, which is the same as in Windows 8 and Surface, so the plan has always been that you can develop cross-platform apps – it's very easy to do, it's just an HTML 5 interface – but you have very limited access to the hardware. If that's what they're talking about with this self-publishing programme, it's not the same as self-publishing on Nintendo or Sony. I wonder about how much has changed." Atkinson-Jones also highlights the limitations of using a retail machine as a development unit. With consoles, most major studios will use special debug versions of the consoles, which come loaded with libraries and APIs designed to help programmers get the most out of the machine. They also tend to have technical differences, which help when running early code. "Using retail machines as debugs doesn't make sense," says Atkinson-Jones. "If you want to create large-scale games, you need more memory on your debug machine. It's all just quite limited." It's a theme picked up on by Andrew Newton of Clever Beans, the studio responsible for PS3 indie title When Vikings Attack. "If they're opening up retail consoles to programming, it will definitely have to be limited. You need to ensure the security of the system to prevent hacking. It sounds like it'll be a little like the new version of XNA [a special toolkit and coding application designed for small indie studios to develop Xbox 360 titles], which did allow developers to create things a bit more easily because it's a managed system; on the other hand you wouldn't be able to create a Triple A product with that. The hardware access is limited." Alex Zoro, founder of PixelToys, saw Microsoft's move coming, but expected more information by now. "Microsoft has historically been open to indies but I'm surprised they didn't announce more at E3," he says. "They haven't handled the PR in a way that's done them any favours, and we still don't know much about what they're proposing. I presume they are moving toward the openness of the Apple store, and if you look at the increasing integration between Microsoft's platforms, they need an integration of policies. Also, we don't really know Sony's policies either; they've talked about being open, but both manufacturers will have agreements that you have to sign up to; I'm sure the wording on those won't yet be finalised on either machine. Nothing is clear at the moment." Zoro also questions the idea that working within retail machines will limit indie developers in what they can achieve. "If you look at the way that people develop for mobile devices now, there's no special hardware, everyone is using the devices themselves – it's about having adequate tools to get the debug information that you want. If Microsoft builds enough of the diagnostics into the machine, then in the same way you can build a high quality iPhone game, you can do that for the Xbox One as well." For other developers, the worry isn't that games developed using the retail hardware will be technically inferior to "officially" produced titles, it's that they'll be ghettoised on the Xbox One menu system. Xbox 360 offered the XNA toolset, but all the games developed using that limited language were placed within the Xbox Live Indie Games portal, which was somewhat hidden away on the dashboard. Sean Taylor at Dundee studio Denki, which produced the critically acclaimed Xbox Live game Quarrel, sees discoverability as the key issue: "My first reaction to the announcement was to wonder whether this was a genuine shift towards an app store model, such as the one Ron Carmel blogged about in 2011, or whether it was simply a PR-friendly resurrection of the Xbox LIVE Indie Arcade Channel. I'm hoping that they use Gamescom to confirm it's the real deal. "Whichever model it turns out to be, the problem of curation and discoverability will loom large. Getting it right could be the factor that persuades a lot of developers to switch allegiance. But visibility is something which has become increasingly worse with every dashboard update on the 360, so it's a challenge for them. I don't think good games made on retail consoles will look or feel like second class citizens. The crucial question is whether or not Microsoft will treat games created on retail consoles as second-class citizens regardless." Dan Marshall, whose latest game Gun Monkeys has just been released on PC, is more optimistic. "It's hard to be grumpy about these things now," he says. "Good on them, they've been paying attention and they're making strides in the right direction. But in typical Microsoft fashion, they've put out a vague statement about what it means. What they should have done is provide a link to some boring corporate website that has a list itemising everything for the developers whose income and lives will depend on this thing." Marshall is also unconcerned about any technical limits that might accompany a development environment running on a retail machine. "From a certain point of view, it's brilliant," he says. "Dev kits go for around $15,000 – well as an indie, that's $15,000 that I can now spend on better graphics or polishing bugs or nicer music. It instantly opens doors. We're in this era of Unity and of engines and middleware doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. In all honestly, I don't have the time or the technical understanding to be dicking around with the memory access or graphics processing unit. That stuff's vital if you're making Gran Turismo 6, but if you have a small indie team, you're not going to need that raw power." The reaction then, is one of very cautious optimism. There are questions about how the Xbox One system will be opened up to self-publishing studios, and on the limits of any programme that involves the use of a retail machine as a development unit. And while Sony has sought to present indie as very much a part of the wider package, even showcasing a whole bunch of smaller titles during its E3 press conference, it's unclear whether Microsoft will present a similar meritocracy on its own system. Xbox One chief product officer Marc Whitten has suggested the answers will come at Gamescom. This time, finally, there can be no room for ambiguity. (c) 2013 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |