By Paula Beaton Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet published a statement on X outlining steps the brand will take to make it easier for independent developers to bring their games to the Xbox platform.
This has been an ongoing issue, with developers complaining about the complexity of the process, and Van Vliet’s statement mentions that Xbox has “heard the feedback from developers.”
The Xbox CTO goes on to say that the team will look at simplifying their “concept and publishing processes,” with more on this soon.
The topic is one that was recently touched on by CEO Asha Sharma at the recent Xbox town hall meeting. Sharma spoke about simplifying publishing across Xbox consoles and PC, so it’s clear that this is a core focus for the brand moving forwards.
“Right now, it is simply very hard to work with Xbox. So, we are simplifying the targets, we’re moving to a headless partner center, we’re taking the cruft out of our APIs, and we’re making them machine-readable. There’s a lot of work here. We need developers to be able to work with us, understand how they are performing, and have tools that actually grow their business. There’s a lot we can do here. I’m encouraged by the work happening.”
One comment on the Xbox CTO’s X post mentioned the late availability of review codes on Xbox, compared to other platforms. While it’s true that codes have historically been available faster for PS5, we’re seeing some improvement in this lately, and Van Vliet responded, mentioning that it’s added to the list for his team to review.
This is all great news for indie developers as well as those working in games journalism as reviewers — watch this space for any future updates on this!