Microsoft To Allow Indie-Devs To Self-Publish, Confirms That “Every Xbox One Can Be Used for Development”

In yet another drastic alteration of their policies, Microsoft wants to give all developers the opportunity to self-publish on the Xbox One and to also allow developers to use the platforms itself to create games.

“Our vision is that every person can be a creator. That every Xbox One can be used for development,” wrote Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten in a statement. “That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE.”

To learn more, he added, “We’ll have more details on the program and the timeline at gamescom in August.”

Speaking to GameInformer, Whitten detailed Microsoft’s commitment to independent developers. He states that restrictions on the type or scope won’t be limited. “Our goal is to give them access to the power of Xbox One, the power of Xbox Live, the cloud, Kinect, Smartglass,” he said. “That’s what we think will actually generate a bunch of creativity on the system.”

He also mentioned that when it comest revenue splitting with developers, it will fall in line “generally like we think about Marketplace today,” which means an approximate 50-50 split, according to GameInformer

Whitten also touched on improvements made to Microsoft’s certification process. “My goal has always been to reduce the amount of time it takes to make a certification pass,” he explained. “It’s good for all reasons, and it’s a function of how to you build the automation. My goals will always be to take the amount of time in certification down.”

In closing, Whitten mentioned that devkit functionality will not be ready at launch, however, and that while enabling retail units to function as devkits and play non-final code might be problematic, he said, “This is the type of thing that you can only do at the start of a generation. You make a set of assumptions, and those assumptions get baked in at the beginning. When you ask questions like that [about security], you’re looking through the lens of how Xbox 360 works, and based on how we developed a lot of these things in 2004 and 2005.”

What are your thoughts on Microsoft’s change-of-heart?

Thanks, Clayton.

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