Microsoft has a lot to prove with ID@Xbox, the company's new indie game initiative for Xbox One.

Between the mishandled Xbox Indie Games program on Xbox 360, developers feeling abandoned by the lack of XNA support on Xbox One and Sony's increased push to bring indie games to its platforms, it appeared that ID@Xbox support would be an uphill battle.

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At GDC 2014, Microsoft brought along an ID@Xbox showcase that told a different story, with a variety of 25 games on hand to play and the announcement that 250 independent developers have signed up to the scheme so far.

Digital Spy sat down with ID@Xbox director Chris Charla to discuss the program's progress so far, its future, and what the program means for indie games and the Xbox One marketplace.

Tell us about ID@Xbox and how the initiative differs from Xbox Live Indie Games and Xbox Live Arcade.

"At its core, ID@Xbox is a self-publishing platform for independent developers on Xbox One. When you talk about Xbox Live Indie Games and Xbox Live Arcade, I think about some of the openness of Xbox Live Indie Games with the full access to all of the platform features of Xbox Live Arcade.

"So a game that comes through ID@Xbox has full access to everything you can do on Xbox, from Kinect to SmartGlass, the whole Live stack, Gamerscore, achievements, everything. That's probably how it would relate to XBLIG and XBLA.

Toxic Games



"One other thing. In contrast to those programs on Xbox 360, on Xbox One games that come through ID@Xbox are sold in the same Xbox game store as every other game.

"There's not a separate section. It's just a game is a game is a game. Games that come through ID@Xbox will be right next to games from any other publisher."

That actually leads into one of the concerns I hear most often from developers, and that is the question of discoverability on the Xbox Live marketplace.

"Discoverability for any digital content is I think a growing issue for independent developers, and we're really taking it head on. And I think making sure that the games are in the exact same marketplace, where they can enjoy the fruits of a lot of work that Microsoft has done on discoverability generally, is really important.

"So the games will have the same opportunity to be featured in the curated spotlight section in the game store. They'll be enumerated in the same way and the programmatic features like Trending and Top Games and Top Rated and that sort of thing, the recommendation engine that shows you what you're interested in based on your past play patterns.

Microsoft



"Then the other thing that I think is really important for discoverability that maybe not a lot of people are thinking about right now is the effect of Upload and Twitch on Xbox One.

"So, Upload is what you can do when you say 'Xbox record that' and create a game clip that you can share with your friends is turning out to be an amazing viral discovery tool.

"And so you sort of see your friends feed and you see, 'Oh they played this game, let me check that out', and once you're there you can immediately, in one click, get to the place where you can buy that game.

"We think that it's going to actually be a really important tool, kind of a little bit underestimated right now, really, given just how successful Upload has been in terms of the number of views it had since it launched."

Born Ready Games



And I'm guessing it would be a bit trickier to get that same thing with Twitch?

"Well, I think with Twitch you're going to see a lot of the same thing. I mean, right now..."

I mean with the functionality of a one button marketplace link to buy the game, which might be more complicated with a third-party app like Twitch.

"Right now, when you turn on your Xbox One you can see how many of your friends are broadcasting and immediately go and start watching their Twitch streams.

"I think you're going to get something really similar. Everybody knows, if you talk to any independent developer they'll tell you that getting on the radar of a popular streamer or a popular YouTuber can really help them break their game out. And so we think some similar things are going to happen.

Twitch / Microsoft



How has the experience been of courting indie developers and bringing them onboard for ID@Xbox? I was given the figure that there are now 250 developers signed up.

"Absolutely. So we've had huge interest in the program and we're working really hard to get kits out there as fast as we can.

"And we've gotten them out there to 250 developers, which turns out to be more than the total number of developers who worked on XBLA during the Xbox 360 era, so we're really pleased with where we are right now, and obviously we're just in the start. So there's a lot of room to grow."

In addition to the kits you're sending out, a lot of developers are excited about the prospect of using a retail Xbox One as a development kit, which is a feature that was announced and has been discussed before.

"Yeah, so we mentioned that it's coming, that's still our plan, we don't have any details to announce today. Right now what we're doing is when a developer applies to the program we send them two dev kits at no charge, we offer them Unity [license] at no charge and it's a really popular tool for a lot of developers.

DrinkBox Studios



"And at the end of the day, what we're really trying to do is just lower the friction for developers as much as humanly possible so that it's all about them making the game they have in mind using the unique features of Xbox One, whether it's Kinect or SmartGlass or the ability to connect eight controllers to the console, and deliver their vision to the Xbox One marketplace with as little technical static as humanly possible."

Now, one point that has been quite controversial about ID@Xbox is the parity clause, which as I understand it requires developers who sign up to release games exclusively on Xbox One or at least the same date on Xbox One as on other consoles if it's a multiplatform game. I believe Microsoft's official statement has been that it will be on a case-by-case basis, but could you elaborate on what those cases are?

"We don't really talk about our publishing policies publicly. At the end of the day, we really want developers to be able to ship their games on Xbox One, and we're really excited to get developers on Xbox One.

"And I think if you look around today at these 25 games, that's really just a fraction of what's in development right now on Xbox One, we have a great, diverse array of awesome games that are coming and that's what we're really excited about.

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But for an indie developer, what would be the benefit of releasing exclusively on Xbox One when they can release on their own terms on PlayStation 4, PC, Wii U, and PS Vita?

It's important for developers to release games where they're going to be successful. Obviously we love it when developers release games on PC, we have some interest in that platform as well. And we're not interested in preventing developers from going where they want, what we're interested in is providing a great platform.

"I think that what is exciting to developers about Xbox One, in addition to the fact that it's just a really cool game machine, is a lot of the special and unique features.

"Whether it's Kinect, like Fru over there, is a really good example of a Kinect game. Or what we're doing with SmartGlass, some of our social integration stuff.

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"I don't know if you got to check out IDARB [It Draws a Red Box] over there, but it's got eight players on one screen, which is something pretty special.

"We really think that providing these kinds of unique platform features is what gets developers excited, and that's kinda what gets us games that you can't experience anyplace else."

Digital Spy is reporting live from GDC 2014 throughout this week.

The first ID@Xbox games will be released in the coming weeks on Xbox One.

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