Microsoft since its established Xbox One generation shares efforts to ramp up its platform with a new approach in mind: platform independent developers. With the formation of the ID@Xbox program, developers can find an easier port of entry to establish itself for the industry via Microsoft. One report from gamesindustry.biz shared a gross revenue over $1 billion back in 2020.
Since then, the firm has continued backing this effort with growing demo events for smaller titles. Previously, we saw the ongoing relationship with The Game Awards ID@Xbox demo event which continued this past December. Additionally, a separate arrangement with /twitchgaming held its fall event last year as well. The Xbox firm also held a similar showcase for GDC-featured titles as well last month.
Now in a new blog post from Microsoft, the firm celebrates the coming 10-year anniversary of the ID@Xbox program and highlights some of the milestones that has been accomplished since the founding of this effort.
We’ve enabled more than 3,000 games to ship on Xbox from independent developers (more than the total number of games that released on the original Xbox and Xbox 360 combined), onboarded more than 5,000 developers into the program, and paid developers more than four billion dollars.
Let’s talk more about Game Pass in a sec, but first – wow! Four billion dollars is really a lot of money! It’s such a testament not only to the power of videogames as an entertainment medium, but the power of independent development, our fans and players, and proof that when you listen and work to empower developers, good things happen.
Our first goal in the program has always been to make shipping games on Xbox as straightforward and easy as possible, whether that’s technically getting a build working on Xbox, working through the backend store provisioning work, or signing a contract. We still work on this goal every day. But we are also keen to listen to other needs our devs have, and to respond – that’s how we introduced self-publishing in the first place!
Chris Charla, ID@Xbox Director
“Over the years, several programs have started at Xbox in direct response to independent developers’ feedback, from our early access program, Xbox Game Preview, to cross-platform play with friends on PC and other manufacturers’ consoles, as well as cross-progression, so players’ progress in a game elsewhere can carry over to Xbox,” Charla adds.
“That last one took a minute to happen, and we thank all the devs who worked closely with us to make it happen in a way that was robust and safe for our player community. Ironically, we’ve even enabled retail disc publishing for developers in ID@Xbox, Xbox’s digital self-publishing program. This retail program is still in the pilot phase with a limited number of partners, but developers can make physical versions of their games with only a low “minimum order quantity” of physical units from Xbox.
“We’ve also been excited to help developers participate in programs such as Game Pass, which help them find audiences as much as they help players find their new favorite games. One thing that’s become clear as the ID@Xbox program has grown, especially over the last few years as the pandemic curtailed travel, is that it’s become hard for us to know every developer in the program, and that can make it a challenge for devs to share their concepts with us.”
Meeting partners new and old and looking at games is one of the most amazing parts of getting to work on a program like ID@Xbox, and we’re never going to slow that down.
But to ensure all developers get equal access to decision makers at Xbox, and to provide faster feedback to developers on concepts submitted – especially for Game Pass deal evaluations – we’re going to be launching a new process that provides a template that has all the info developers need to submit a concept for deal consideration, and that will be looked at by the key decision makers from our Game Pass, business development, ID@Xbox and Portfolio teams.
“This will help ensure that whether a developer knows someone at Xbox personally or not, they can get their game into deal consideration quickly. And that will help us ensure we continue to bring the widest variety of games to our players on Xbox and in Game Pass – as well as meeting lots of new developers! Of course, this process will require a mutual NDA to ensure folks’ IP rights are protected.”
What are your thoughts on what ID@Xbox has accomplished so far?
Source: Xbox Wire