Is Microsoft strangling the indie developer? In an interview with TGR, one developer told us that the certification process is a money drain, and it doesn't make financial sense to release full XBLA titles.
Binary Tweed has announced that the extended and upgraded version of Clover: A Curious Tale (previously only out for PC) has made its way onto Xbox Live via the Indie Games channel and is now available to download.
In the run-up to Clover: A Curious Tale's March 3rd release, Binary Tweed and Blitz 1UP are making the soundtrack to the Xbox LIVE Indie Games original Clover available for free.
DIYgamer.com writes: "DIYgamer only launched in October, but we have been busy playing independent games all year long. As the year winds down and news comes to a crawl as people head off for the holidays, we'd like to share what we found to be the best, most innovative, most interesting and all around entertaining indie games that came out this year. Our selection process was simple. Each writer here at the site was asked to submit their top five games of the year. We chose our game of the year based on the title with the highest number of appearances in those lists and the runner-up would be the one with the next most appearances. The rest all fall under honorable mention in alphabetical order, as each one struck us in a way to remain memorable and worthy of a top five of 2009 list."
im sure microsoft do not care about indie developers because they are shutting down their own developers left and right one by one next up is rare this is just the truth
oh guys did you hear jonathan blow wants to release braid on psn if sony is interested
It sucks that smaller developers can't get a break because if you think about it there our future.
the certification process is there for a reason, it isn't hard to develop for you just got to make a stable game
you can't have something going out to the public that may by chance have a negative effect on their system or their hard disk
if a game doesn't pass certification that means there is a problem with the game, with the code, therefore the developer needs to fix it
the process could be streamlined a bit but for me i'm all for certification programs, you won't have disasters where an arcade game goes out bricking systems or a patch that does more harm than good, or corrupted files on hard drives
the guy isn't going to make a huge return on community games either, they are flooded with crap that nobody wants to pay for(ie fireplace,fishbowl,controller massage), not to mention they lack achievements and other things that warrants the price of an arcade game
i have yet to actually see a community game that impresses, this clover game is no exception
a better case could be made if his game didn't look like a 2 dollar braid ripoff, i can see why he doesn't want to shop for a publisher because honestly nobody wants to pick something up that looks like somebody redrew the sprites to sonic 2
small developers can easily break into the industry via XBLA it just seems as though they don't want to put in the leg work
if you have a quality product getting it out via XBLA isn't very hard, to me this sounds like sour grapes because a game may not be up to snuff
I hope Indi Devs catch a break as there our future in gaming, be it on XBLA, PSN or WiiWare