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ID@Xbox won't disappear with the next console generation
When Microsoft revealed the ID@Xbox program in 2013, Xbox CVP Phil Harrison said he hoped it would usher tens of thousands of games onto the Xbox ecosystem. Five years on, Microsoft is 10 percent of the way there -- the company has officially published 1,000 games via the ID@Xbox program. (All things remaining equal, this means we'll hit Harrison's goal by 2068. Maybe hold off on printing those "Congrats on 10,000 games" banners for another few decades). "We're really kinda happy with where we are right now," ID@Xbox head Chris Charla told Engadget. "That doesn't mean there isn't tons of work to do for developers going forward, or that we're gonna slow down."
Don't bank on Kinect games in 2017
"The problem is not that nobody has Kinect, but it's that nobody is talking about it anymore." That's Mattia Traverso, the creator of Kinect-exclusive game Fru. Traverso has a unique perspective on the Kinect marketplace because he's one of the last video-game developers to build an experience specifically for Microsoft's motion-sensing peripheral. Not that the Kinect is officially dead. However, Kinect is clearly not a priority for Microsoft. In 2016, the Xbox One's Kinect 2 received just two notable games from third-party studios, Fru and Just Dance 2017. Microsoft hasn't released a motion-sensing game itself since 2014, the same year the company announced it would start selling the Xbox One without the Kinect bundled in the box. Support for the peripheral has disappeared over the past three years, and with it, so has public attention.
Xbox One self-publishing begins in early 2014 with a big list of devs onboard
It looks like Microsoft is on its way to the "tens of thousands of games" it wants produced through its "ID@Xbox" self-publishing program on Xbox One: The company announced this morning that the program will kick off starting in early 2014. The news dropped alongside a lengthy list of developers already signed on -- from the big (Crytek) to the small (Definition 6, which is basically just a single dude) -- some of which we've already heard from. Below dev studio Capy, for instance, was a known quantity. We've dropped the full list of devs after the break, alongside some of the games they're best known for. Microsoft's self-publishing head Chris Charla (the man previously behind Xbox Live Arcade) says today's list of devs is "far from comprehensive," and "just the first selection of the hugely diverse complement of developers who are working on bringing games to Xbox One via ID@Xbox beginning early next year."
