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[Problem Machine]

Holy wow I'd never seen this sin(surfing) thing before but it's quite similar to something I made at work. Wacky.

[PaleFox]

I think one issue that the community games has is that it requires a substantial - for some - commitment to produce games for the service. Yes, it's not that high. Yes. Supposing I, therefore, subscribe with the intention of making a game but... eh. It doesn't work out. But hey! I made this animation of a fireplace - or a radio clock, or a game that lasts five seconds, or whatever - and I might as well send it in. After all, I did pay them. And the service fills up with useless dreck and badly programmed pointlessness and little gizmos that tell you the time as long as you have your 360 on the internet (since you can't use them offline). There are some amazing gems in there: I bought Hexothermic for 200 points and it is brilliant and beautiful, in a way that belies its low budget. Hexy Trench is good fun as well, and it was featured on Indiegamer. But they are buried under the huge pile of garbage, and so other people with talent are now less likely to join up. Note that these games I have mentioned are dirt cheap, whereas many pointless trinkets are 400-800 points... What kind of relationship is this?

And I remember when Microsoft called it "homebrew." This was clearly a blatent lie.

[Alex May]

The whole point of the rename and the addition of a ratings system is to fix what you're complaining about.

I also don't understand how in any way this isn't homebrew, unless your definition of homebrew is that you have no help from the platform holder.

[Cevo70]

Yes, the gripes are certainly valid.  But these changes should bring optimism.

At lot of the crap is a result of people trying "work the system."  The "most popular" and "new releases" get so much more traffic/sales that people are essentially trying to find ways to spam those lists and retain their slots.  It's not exactly cool/ethical but you have to consider the strategy of any platform.   You're sort of forced to play that game because everyone else is.

Thus we see things like the IGN List which was clearly intended to highlight quality, and soon we will have a "top rated" which has the same intentions.  This will help drive attention away from Massage Fart 4, because right now it's too easy for them to get quick exposure.

The key is to help people navigate to what they want, namely the good games in each genre.    But ultimately the consumer makes the call.  Read reviews, talk to your peers, take some time to actually play the demos and purchase the good games.   As the consumers, we play a major role making this a viable and worthwhile platform.

[Entar]

Yeah, while I think it is a little weird that they did that, especially considering that there are already indie games available on XBLA (Braid, Castle Crashers, etc.), I can see the reason for it. "Community games" just sounds like a bunch of games made by people who don't know a whole lot of what they're doing (which isn't entirely wrong, but there are some good ones on there). In any case, I don't see it as that big of a deal either.

[c-foo peng]

Premium Creators now have the ability to give out tokens for their games!

Customers who’ve already purchased the game will automatically be asked if they want to download the most updated

Two Steps Forward.

Games can only be sold at 80, 240, or 400 Microsoft Points.

Four Steps Back. Now according to Microsoft, Indie Games = Cheapo Games. Five bucks max!

I'm sure some developers are going to be rattled by this.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

Why is there even a limit in the first place?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

don't forget the new news that they now want to limit indie games on the xbla, and only have a certain number of "slots" for indie games per year from now on -- no such limit exists for mainstream developers

[Alex May]

Yeah, although it seemed impossible, the quality of games on there will actually drop now.

[Shade Jackrabbit]

I really hope I'm not the only one who expected something like this from Microsoft...

[Alex May]

They've been consistently giving indies the shaft for a long time.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

I just don't care anymore. It's obvious MS is trying to cash in on all the latest crazes (iphone impulse buy price points, "indie" poking more and more into mainstream in a positive light, etc) and all they're proceeding to do is piss off the developers who would be the ones to make their system worthwhile.

[c-foo peng]

I wonder what's going to happen to Owlboy and other games planning on release on XBLI.

Option 1) Find publisher, get XBLA Deal
Option 2) Sell for cheaps
Option 3) PC Windows only
Option 4) Restart the project using a different language

Seems like a rather bleak proposition.

[arrogancy]

Well, there go my more ambitious XBLIG titles I had planned. Only 400 point quick games and 80 point novelty games from here on out.

[moi]

Excuse me guys, I've not kept up to date on the computer news for the last 20 years, but are you really implying that microsoft is using it's monopolistic power to stiffle innovation and keep the small guy down?
I'm shocked.

[Impossible]

no such limit exists for mainstream developers

This is just misinformed.  MS does not release infinite games on XBLA, they do a single release per week.  There are limited slots (due to the nature of the service), but 35 of those slots are for indie developers.  In this case indie probably doesn't necessary mean what you'd like it to mean, but it does mean not from a major publisher or developer (EA, Capcom, Activision, id, Epic, Valve, etc.)

I do think that the new price points (and the continued lack of freeware support) on XBLI are a bad idea.  They should have price points that range from at least $0-$15, preferably in the $0-$25 range.  I can see them not wanting to let people set arbitrarily high prices but they should at least allow for all the common XBLA price points (free, $5, $10, $15.)

[Stegersaurus]

I actually liked the lack of sub-$2.50 pricing they had, because to me it meant that there wouldn't be a bunch of whiners about "this should be free" or having to compete with a mass of free stuff with something more expensive being hard to notice.

Of course, I've been nerd-raging on the XNA forums, since the low starter price and lack of a $10 price point bugs me, especially considering the game I'm in the middle of working on. I was hoping to sell on XBox and PC for $10 or more. Now I'm considering having less content on the XBox version and trying to point people to my site to buy the PC version. I've been skeptical of the XBLIG service since my first game flopped, but if I had known this ahead of time my current project would have been VERY different (probably not in XNA, and probably of a completely different genre).