Microsoft’s indie games program ID@Xbox has been a huge success thus far, with over $1.4 billion spent on games till date. This was revealed by European lead Agostino Simonetta at the recent GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit Online. Thus far, the program covered 3,400 studios across 64 countries.
Simonettta said that, “Obviously, we are not a publisher — we are the platform. We don’t know how many are coming, or when they will come, but there’s a lot of activity.” Right now, ID@Xbox is aware of around 1,800 games that are in the works under its program. Considering that it was first announced back in August 2013, it’s certainly come a long way.
After the Xbox One was initially revealed back in 2013, it generated significant criticism for its indie game policy especially since it required titles to be published through Microsoft or a third-party publisher. ID@Xbox did away with that requirement, making it much easier for even single-person studios to bring their games to the console. However, there was the parity clause, which stated that any game under ID@Xbox had to release for all other platforms at the same time. We haven’t heard too much about that over the years, for better or worse.
Time will tell how much further ID@Xbox can go so stay tuned for more details.