Microsoft hasn’t had the best reputation among indie developers, but that looks to be coming to an end, according to at least one developer. In an interview with Eurogamer, Teddy Diefenbach of Heart Machine – the studio that created Hyper Light Drifter – says the home of the Xbox brand is finally coming in line with approaches made by their competitors:
“It’s friendly, it’s got the same terms as everybody else, basically… it’s much more open than it ever was. It’s not like it was in the 360 days.”
“They were kind of dicks about it back in the day.”
During the Xbox 360 era, and notably covered in Indie Game: The Movie, Microsoft developed a reputation of being hard to work with, with complaints ranging from failing to post games to Xbox Live Arcade when promised, to charging developers thousands of dollars to issue game patches, to Fez creator Phil Fish being so put off by the whole experience that he declared he wouldn’t work with them for future games.
The change in approach is attritbuted to the ID@Xbox program, which gives indie developers a hand with two free development kits, full access to every feature the Xbox One has, and a more streamlined start-to-finish development process. Diefenbach says this brings Microsoft closer to Sony’s approach with the PS4, which is obviously working. Recently, Sony announced that more than 1,000 independent game studios have signed on to develop for their machines.
It’s not all wine and roses, though, as Microsoft still faces some criticism, chief of which is a clause in the ID@Xbox program that requires indie devs to release the Xbox One version of a game on the same day as other versions, taking away possible timed-exclusivity deals. They’re reportedly the only platform that includes this restriction.