Microsoft has decided to give small and independent game developers some improvements if they wish to submit titles to their Xbox Live Indie Games for digital download publishing via the Xbox 360. In a blog post today, Microsoft announced that the upper limit of the size of those games has increased. Previously the upper limit was 150 MB but now developers can submit games that can be up to 500 MB in size.
In addition to the the size of the games, Microsoft is giving game developers some flexibility on setting the price of their games. Previously, any game published on Xbox Live Indie Games that was bigger than 50 MB had to be priced higher than 80 Microsoft Points. Now Microsoft has announced that games of up to 150 MB in size can be priced at the low 80 Microsoft Points level. Finally, Microsoft said that game developers could now upload a total of 20 games to be published via Xbox Live Indie Games, compared to the previous limit of 10 games.
In 2011, Microsoft caught some heat from some smaller game developers who complained that releasing games via Xbox Live Indie Games, while a very open and very easy to use platform, did not result in most game developers making money from their creations.