James Delahunty
10 Dec 2011 10:18
Indie devs concerned about new Metro-styled Xbox dashboard.
Representatives of the Xbox Live Indie Games community, told Eurogamer that the update shifts focus away from games considerably, and that it's even worse for Indie games.
"Microsoft take a back-seat approach and only really gets involved to take a cut of your sales and make the games slightly harder to find with each new dashboard update," said Brett Eveleigh, developer of Avatar Battle Bees.
"Not that anyone wants to go through the pain of retail/arcade style certification but it feels like Microsoft has abandoned the platform in favour of Windows Phone 7. But instead of admitting it they're brushing it under the carpet and hoping it'll go away."
There is currently an Indie Games tile on the mew Dashboard, but there are fears that this will phase out in time. Also, Indie games are not listed under New Arrivals or Genre tabs.
"For better or worse, the new Metro layout is an advertiser's dream," said Mommy's Best Games founder Nathan Fouts. "Every single main page now has an advertisement on it (you can't scroll away any more), there are dozens of secret little places to feature things, and it's easy to get lost."
"But simply getting to the main portal for Arcade, Games on Demand or Indie Games, or for that matter my own game library is a chore. I like the 'quick list' but if it would have a simple connection to my complete library, it would be a huge help."