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Microsoft responds to Indie devs’ concerns

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Yesterday we posted a piece on how the new Xbox Dashboard update had shuffled some content around. Amongst the bits that were moved was the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace, which Microsoft added to a new Speciality Shops section.

Some Indie devs were angered by the adjustment claiming that their content had been relegated to some obscure side of the Dashboard, while it used to be in the Games Marketplace. Microsoft has since responded to their concerns and pointed out that the change is for their benefit.

The Speciality Shops section is new to Xbox Live. According to Microsoft it is meant to be a section “to provide access to marketplaces that focus on a specific type of content, with unique ways of sorting through that content. We wanted to give Xbox Live Indie Games that full marketplace experience and felt this was the best place to do it, alongside other popular channels like the Avatar Marketplace.”

Exposure next to the Avatar Marketplace Microsoft sees as an extremely positive thing. They highlighted that “Xbox Live members have made more than 290 million customizations to their Avatar’s clothing, so we expect many people to regularly visit the Specialty Shops section.”

Then there are the additional features to the redesigned Xbox.com website. Microsoft has made browsing the Indie titles a much easier experience: “You can now browse the top-rated, top-selling and most recent games by genre. You can also find indie games by ‘best selling today’ and ‘best selling of all time’ on Xbox.com.”

All-in-all it sounds as if the Indie devs have been given a decent bit of thought by Microsoft when it came to the redesigns of the Dashboard and Xbox.com website.

Source: Eurogamer

Last Updated: November 3, 2010

4 Comments

  1. Lol! That’ll teach those indie devs some manners. 😆

    Reply

  2. Fox1

    November 3, 2010 at 11:52

    The difference with smaller devs and larger devs is that the smaller devs lack logic and understanding of design fundamentals. It’s cool to write code but as time is evolving so too must interface designs.

    Reply

  3. doobiwan

    November 3, 2010 at 14:08

    The thing with the Indy devs is that without exposure there will never be a breakout hit. Tucked away in the “Art Nuveaux” Indy marketplace, mainstream users are barely going to be aware it’s there. The best way get exposure is to wave the indy games under peoples noses. But nicely …

    Reply

  4. Luna

    November 4, 2010 at 00:52

    It looks like they’ve adjusted things a bit. During the beta, and I think during the 1st day of release, going into the games area would give you XBLA/Demos/On Demand as the first tab. Now it lands on a highlighted tab. This means you have to move up or down to get to any content areas there. There’s no real way that they can add it “next to” the Avatar editor, as that exists mainly on the My Xbox tab, and there’s no more room, and never was room to the right.

    I know the 1st time I went into Indie games on the first day of the beta (I was suggested an Indie game to try) I was confused. I did shortly find the game, and it took a while. That was all I needed now, and I know what to do to get to Indie games.

    I did miss the “what’s new” area of the old Dash, which would show you new games in each area VERY quickly and easily.

    Reply

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