‘Canada is in a beautifully unique position’
Microsoft puts small studios closer to the centre of its gaming future
SAN FRANCISCO — Independent developers have become a crucial piece to Microsoft Corp.’s video game strategy for both its Xbox and Windows brands, and now the company is opening up its platform so anyone can begin publishing original content.
At the annual industry-focused Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week, Microsoft announced what it calls the Xbox Live Creators Program, which lets someone make original games with any retail Xbox One console and then publish the final product in the company’s digital gaming stores.
“The rise of the indie developer has been probably the most exciting thing to happen to games in the last 10 years,” Chris Charla, head of Microsoft’s indie developer ID@Xbox program, said in an interview during the conference.
“Independent games, or smaller games from smaller developers, have the ability to take a lot of risks and really realize their vision and follow their passion. We’re almost at the point now where the barrier to entry isn’t your ability to program a computer, it’s how good your idea is.”
Modern video game consoles such as the Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 have helped usher in a digital distribution era in which major blockbuster titles such as Call of Duty and Halo can live alongside independently made games that are cheaper, shorter and often more unique experiences.
In a global video game industry expected to hit almost $79 billion US in sales this year, according to the research firm Statista, indie developers now have a direct line to consumers through digital marketplaces and programs offered by the companies making the home consoles.
“The net result, for us as players and gamers, is when you turn on an Xbox One or PC the variety of game you’ll see is broader, more diverse and better than it ever has been in history,” said Charla. “For independent games, we’ve been in this golden age since about 2008 and it just doesn’t show any signs of ending.”
Independent Games @ Xbox (or ID@XBOX) was first announced in August 2013 as a program anyone could apply for with a game pitch. If approved by Xbox, the applicant would receive two free development kits that allow access to the Xbox platform’s hardware or software features and eventually end up with a published title for the Xbox, Windows or both.
The program has led to hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue generated by independent games, according to Charla, with tens of millions of gamers playing ID@Xbox-generated titles for more than a billion of hours in 2016 alone. There are now currently more than 1,000 titles under production using the program.
“The results have really exceeded our best-case vision for the program when we started it,” he said.
Many games under production using Microsoft’s ID@Xbox program are from Canada and showcased at events during the conference in San Francisco. In fact, Canadian games are some of the best in the world and most prominent in the ID@Xbox program, according to Charla.