The funny, unhelpful thing about Xbox Live Indie Games is that it's both a cheery advertisement for, and a dire warning against letting developers publish their own games on massive digital storefronts.
"It all makes for promising reading, but none of it addresses the problem of how Microsoft could impose certain entry requirements on developers without scaring them off"
"Given the role that television plays, and that we know we have a true family box - we everybody to be able to sit down and play Sesame Street, National Geographic or if you're age-appropriate, Call of Duty and Halo - we'll want to keep some control over the appropriateness of the content that's on the box"
yet more spin
so a game like the Witness is now pornography and the body dismemberment simulator Ryse is a family friendly game.
Ryse/witness and whatever else will come with an appropriate age certification.
It's just QC, and at the end of the day Microsoft are spending a fair bit of money in this regard where as Sony are just sitting back saying yeh whatever...
Are they saying that self publishing means no ESRB ratings of any kind?
As far as appropriateness of the content goes, I guess games featuring graphic violence are cool on the "true family box", the E3 gameplay demo of Ryse leaps to mind, and some 360 games definitely had sexual content, so what exactly do they think is going to happen? Custer's Revenge 2?
They didn't say they didn't want Blowhards game on the system. He's stated before he doesn't want anything to do with anything other than making games. He complained about both the 360 and PS3 before. He's stated before he'd rather it be like PC and just release the game and whatever you like after.
I'm sure you can set content restrictions even on the 360 now where games and movies won't even play past whatever rating you like. There was nothing spin in that article other than Micro stating they want to control what content gets released so it isn't filled with mess.
You clearly don't understand the issue at hand... it's not in terms of appropiate content like sex, violence or profanity, it's a matter of where you put said content.
The most important part:
"It all makes for promising reading, but none of it addresses the problem of how Microsoft could impose certain entry requirements on developers without scaring them off"
Self-publishing does not mean zero quality control