ID@Xbox is more crucial than ever for Xbox’s future.
For those who don’t know, ID@Xbox is Microsoft’s indie publishing label, approving games across Xbox console and Xbox PC platforms. ID@Xbox has evolved to incorporate more than just smaller indie titles however, now handling direct-to-digital publishing for larger independent publishers as well.
Xbox Game Camp expands its horizons
ID@Xbox and Chris Charla have been spearheading the Xbox Game Camp program, which is something I rarely see discussed in the wider Xbox community. Game Camps are projects funded entirely by Microsoft, bringing together aspiring game developers of all experience levels to game jam and work on a variety of projects. Therein, Microsoft provides mentorship, networking, and in some cases, ID@Xbox certification and dev kits, to help new talent find its footing.
“Over 12 weeks, the teams work on a project,” Charla explains. “Microsoft provides a mentor from Xbox for every team, who then meets weekly to talk about their projects. Mentor-y stuff. They will get to talk to luminaries like Ken Lobb, do Q&As, and so on. Getting that kind of access to folks from marketing, art, and coding is just huge, and the ultimate goal is to help start new teams, and help people understand that game development is just possible. It’s of course, really, really hard, and a huge amount of work. Nobody will say it’s easy. But it’s doable, and possible.”
“We’ve done Game Camp in a lot of different locations, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. We’ve done it in Detroit, New Orleans, in Africa, and we just completed one in Korea.”
I asked Chris Charla how aspiring game developers can get started today, without access to something like Xbox Game Camp or university funding and the like. YouTube is the great resource.
“Honestly, get a YouTube Premium subscription. There’s so much great content on YouTube for how to start game development. If you asked me to lay out a year curriculum, I would say watch an hour or two a day of videos about game development, how to use Unity, Unreal Game Maker, or Godot. You need that basis of understanding how games come together. You’ll hear conflicting information, because there are lots of ways to do it. You will find yourself gravitating towards things that sound better to you. There’s not one true path, it’s about finding your path.”
The elephant in the room: Steam
I recently started a podcast interview series with game developers, learning their takes and feelings about the Xbox ecosystem and its wider direction. In the interviews I’ve done so far, a common theme seems to be, essentially, that Steam is far easier to work with than the traditional console publishers.
I asked Chris Charla why developers feel this way, and he was frank about the work Microsoft needs to do to fix it.
“I won’t comment on Steam directly but of course we hear the same things,” Charla concedes. “Devs aren’t shy about saying where they’re having good experiences, or places where we could be doing better. We take that feedback to heart. I can’t express — you know, whether it’s public, or feedback given privately, it gets forwarded around the teams. It really gets taken to heart.
We’re doing a bunch of things to address those issues directly.”
Indeed, hot on the heels of this interview, Microsoft and Xbox took the step to publicize its list of publishing rules for Xbox console and Xbox PC platforms for the first time. These documents were previously under strict NDA for decades, but making them public is a step towards a more open publishing regime for the Microsoft ecosystem. Developers suggest to me that simple things like setting up beta tests or sales events for their games is a laborious process on Xbox, and while Charla didn’t have specifics, he did acknowledge that work needs to be done here.
“We are working actively to make it easier to publish on Xbox, faster to publish on Xbox, across both console and PC. We don’t want bringing games to Xbox to be a lengthy, painful process.”
Another aspect of Xbox’s operation that has been under scrutiny to some degree is Xbox Game Pass. I’ve heard some developers suggest to me that indie games have a tough time being discovered without a Game Pass investment, and some have even suggested that Game Pass investment has decreased. Charla says that’s not the case.
“I’m probably not the best person to speak on Xbox Game Pass economics, but I can tell you that the investment we’re making in independent games and ID@Xbox is not decreasing at all.”
“For consideration in Xbox Game Pass, it’s looked at eagerly by the portfolio team, the Game Pass team, folks from the ID@Xbox team. And you know, they can and do sign games for Game Pass that come through the ID@Xbox program. We obviously can’t say yes to everything, but we want to make it as easy as possible for people to submit their games for consideration.”
Microsoft’s “This is an Xbox” strategy needs indie devs more than ever
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario that Microsoft potentially finds itself in here. It’s coming at the problem from the opposite direction of Steam, who already has all the games and developer support. Microsoft has the hardware pipeline and OEM support, but its content library is far less organic than Steam, with developers often opting out of Xbox without direct investment from Microsoft.
Steam is the place to be right now, with even PlayStation capitulating to its userbase. A large part of that is its mature tools and open nature. Users curate the content on Steam, either directly via word of mouth or algorithmically, with sales and engagement surfacing content arguably more effectively and dynamically than Xbox’s stores do. When I open the Xbox PC store right now, it offers me Fortnite Crew, which I have absolutely zero interest in, as well as a YouTube video I’ve already watched. Steam by comparison offers me a range of games I’ve never heard of that actually look compelling — because it has both the content, and strong data about my gaming habits.
Microsoft doesn’t have enough customers on its PC store to organically entice developers to support Xbox PC, and it doesn’t have enough games to entice customers organically either. Everything revolves around Xbox Game Pass there, which is both a blessing and a curse. Games in the service get instant engagement and visibility, but games trying to sell through organically can barely get noticed.
Opening up Xbox further to indies on PC should be a way to foster new growth for the platform. Microsoft is already offering Xbox PC devs a more generous 88% cut, over Steam and Xbox console’s traditional 70% cut. Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming growth is also a wildcard here, finding market penetration in countries that traditionally aren’t console-centric, or even PC-centric.
It sounds as though Xbox has the right mentality about openness as it heads further towards a PC-oriented gaming ecosystem. But the user experience, both for developers and customers, still needs a huge boost.
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