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Developers And Fans React To Microsoft's Xbox Indie Reversal

community reaction

by Mike Futter on July 25, 2013 at 07:20 AM

21,655 Views

Right after we broke the story of Microsoft's reversal on the Xbox indie self-publishing policy, social media lit up. Developers and fans alike chimed in, off the cuff. Prepared statements are great (and we have a couple ourselves), but the raw reactions are important.

Before we get to that, we want to share two quotes from developers that had worked with Microsoft previously, but have since begun working with Sony for various reasons. Both Klei Entertainment and Just Add Water were presented at Sony's press conference, and the founders of both provided their reactions to the news about Microsoft's latest policy shift.

"That is good news indeed! I suppose the real test is in discoverability of the games on the dashboard."
- Jamie Cheng, Founder, Klei Entertainment (Don't Starve)

"This news, whilst awesome is a long way from being detailed. Personally I need to know the full details before we can commit to announcing Oddworld titles for the Xbox family."
- Stewart Gilray, Founder, Just Add Water (Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee - New 'n' Tasty)

"I think it's a step in the right direction but the devil is in the details. If the revenue share is 50/50, that's absolutely horrible and by far the worst split out there. If the SDK forces you to go through some abstraction layer like XNA to get to the hardware, that's also horrible and would be of no interest to me. Fingers crossed for a 70/30 split and a good SDK...otherwise I'll stick to everything else."
- Tommy Refenes, Team Meat co-founder (Super Meat Boy)

Now, onto the responses right after the announcement. What you'll see below is a small collection of immediate responses from people. These aren't reactions to a request for a quote. They are raw responses to exciting news.

Benjamin Cousins, Head of European Game Studios at DeNA