Microsoft pushed its 2010 refresh of the Xbox Live Dashboard to Xbox 360 consoles yesterday, and some indie game developers aren"t happy with some of the changes Microsoft has made in the latest update.
Develop Online, a game design news site, reports that Microsoft"s latest Xbox 360 refresh has got indie developers red faced, after they separated "games" from "indie games."
In the latest update, Microsoft moved the "Xbox Live Indie Games store" right to the back of the shop, and put it under "Specialty." Developers are posting over on the Microsoft App Hub forum, complaining that the shuffle discourages them to continue developing the games, as they are now getting next to no exposure.
"Spyn Doctor" posts on the forums, "Looks like all the Devs who made XBLIG apps had it right all the time, and we "Game" developers were the ones who had it wrong. As the new dashboard clearly shows, Microsoft does no longer consider XBLIGs to be "Games.""
"Personally, I"ve stopped work on my two XBLIG projects until I see a clear and positive direction emerge for XBLIG, and so far it"s not looking good," says another user by the name of Jason Deacon.
The feedback is both good and bad though, with "AwesomeGamesStudio" writing, "Hey, at least we"re on Game Marketplace... ;) Seriously, I think that the gamers who used to visit our channel will find XBLIG anyway, no need to mourn."
Develop Online adds that the refresh of the interface this month means that the top 50 indie titles are featured, rather than showing 20. Microsoft has not made any comment on the matter yet, though some developers believe the service is slowly dying off.