MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The new Xbox Live Creators programme might seem quite similar to some. Indeed, when we spoke to ID@Xbox a few months back, we mentioned its precursor, the Xbox Live Indie Games store on the Xbox 360. You’ll probably remember it as the store for indie developers and solo hobbyists using the XNA development kits.
Well, sadly it’s time has finally come. On September 29th, Microsoft and ID@Xbox will be shutting down the Xbox Live Indie Games service. While the set up gave us many interesting, questionable and rather crude games, it also was a great place to share things that you’ve created with a wider audience on console.
The new Xbox Live Creators update should replicate that, if not refine it more. But the old program and its content will no longer be available for purchase. However if you have purchased a game on the store, you will still be able to re-download it to your library. Suffice to say that will be Xbox 360 only.
The games, all written using the XNA Game Studio went through a four step process before release, similar to how Steam’s submissions have recently worked. After creating a title, normally in C# or Visual Basic .Net, you submitted the game before it was playtested by premium members of the App Hub submission website and then underwent a peer review.
The service helped to promote indie gaming as a whole with promotions such as the Indie Games Uprising.
The games did follow a theme of either Minecraft graphical clones for tower defence games or used zombies, such as the games FortressCraft and I MAED A MAN3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1NIT!!!1. Personally I enjoyed the Predator inspired rescue helicopter game Get To The Choppa.
