Today it has been announced that every Xbox One can be used to develop games and that indie developers will be able to self publish on the console, however this won’t be available at launch.
VP of Microsoft Marc Whitten announced the news today, saying that a more detailed look at the policies will be given at Gamescom. However he did have a lot to say about the new features to the Xbox One:
“Our vision is that every person can be a creator, that every Xbox One can be used for development. 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. We’ll have more details on the program and the timeline at Gamescom in August.”
He also stated that these things will not be ready at launch: “It’s a “vision, it’s how we architectured it, but it won’t all be there at launch.”
This is great news, the ability to develop games on the console without a dev kit means that a lot more people will be able to afford to start developing games and experimenting with the system, additionally being able to self-publish is fantastic news, that means we will see a lot more indie games on the system. However the fact that you can develop on the system itself does seem too good to be true, I bet there is a catch. I guess we’ll find out in the future.
Let me know in the comments what you think of this news, I’m interested to hear if this changes your opinion on Microsoft or the Xbox One at all.
