Vlambeer: ID@Xbox a huge leap in the right direction

Ridiculous Fishing developer Vlambeer has signed up to Microsoft’s Xbox One self-publishing initiative ID@Xbox, praising the scheme as a huge leap in the right direction.

Microsoft revealed its Xbox One self-publishing plans last week, which will give registered developers access to two free development kits, and set out the firm’s plans to remove application fees, as well as update and certification costs.

On his personal blog, Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail said it was an exciting development for the console, but he still had some reservations on some of the newly revealed details, such as launch parity.

He added that he also had reservations on whether Microsoft would follow through on its promises, citing what he said is a poor track record of doing so.

“ID@Xbox, Microsoft’s somewhat surprising indie initiative, is an exciting development,” said Ismail.

“It’s something we’ve been talking about with Microsoft for a while now and something I feel is a huge leap in the right direction. I still have reservations about some details that we hadn’t heard of before: launch parity for being allowed to release a game is still a bit of a strange notion: simply being allowed to launch on a platform does not mean that developers will accept such demands if the competition does not have them.

"If anything, launch parity excludes developers that are more comfortable with releasing on PlayStation platforms first.

“Only allowing console-published developers to release a game on Xbox means that indies are basically forced to go through either Microsoft Game Studios or – ironically – PlayStation to be able to launch on the platform. I caught up with Chris Charla today at Gamescom and he reassured me some of these limitations are temporary or guided by hardware constraints, which is reassuring.”