It’s not just the Xbox One that will let indies self-publish.
Earlier in the month, we received confirmation from Microsoft that contrary to its initial launch claims, indies will, in fact, be able to self publish titles on the Xbox One. Now, it looks like Microsoft are also spreading the love to their current-gen console, the Xbox 360, with self publishing set to hit the platform as early as next month.
The news comes via a little-known dev called Farsight studios, who announced that it would be self publishing its Pinball Arcade title to the 360’s Xbox Live Arcade. Here’s the full announcement, with the self publishing bit and its predicted release date bolded:
“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 the Pinball 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.”
Very good news for the platform, which is often considered to be pretty unfriendly to independent developers (at least compared to the alternatives). We have reached out to Microsoft for official confirmation.
Source: Gamasutra
