Trying to give more advantage to its new gaming console, Xbox One, Microsoft has announced that indie developers will be able to self-publish their creations on the Xbox One.
The indie developers have more reasons to choose the Xbox over the new PlayStation as the Xbox manufacturer revealed the every Xbox One console is development kit.
“Our vision is that every person can be a creator. 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 program and the timeline at Gamescom in August,” Xbox corporate Vice President Marc Whitten said in a statement.
However, the good news doesn’t end here. As every new piece of information comes out as rumor in the tech world, there are talks of Microsoft going to allow self-publishing in Xbox 360 gaming boxes also.
According to a Gamesutra report, developers are of the view that the self-publishing feature will make its way to Xbox 360s somewhere around August when the annual gaming trade fair, Gamescom is scheduled.
The report cites a fresh statement from Pinball Arcade creator FarSight Studios that is so confident about the self-publishing coming to Xbox 360.
Here is the full statement:
As many of our fans have noticed, the Xbox 360 version of the Pinball Arcade is no longer available in the Live Arcade store. Our publisher for the 360 version recently emerged from bankruptcy and we’d been told that we would be allowed to immediately submit all of the unreleased Table Packs to our long-suffering 360 users.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has elected to revoke the publisher’s license agreement (which is why thePinball Arcade is temporarily not available in the store). However, we have some very good news to share- Microsoft has just announced that indie developers (like FarSight) can now self-publish on Xbox Live Arcade instead of being required to find publishers for their games.
This means we can bring the Pinball Arcade back to the 360 ourselves, and also opens the door to an Xbox One version of the Pinball Arcade in the future! Microsoft has stated that the new program will open in August– we will do everything we can to get the Pinball Arcade (and all of the new Table Packs) back on the Xbox 360 as quickly as possible.
However, Mircrosoft representatives haven’t denied the move but may be trying to play around with word ‘announcement’ to gain more publicity. “We have not announced any changes to our publishing policy for Xbox 360. We look forward to sharing more about self-publishing on Xbox One at Gamescom,” a representative said.
