Did Microsoft Grant My Wish?

A number of months ago, I wrote about my hopes for Microsoft’s Xbox Live Community initiative to grant my wish for an automated online market for developers to sell their games. I wrote that:

I fear that Microsoft will never allow the XNA developers to charge for their games, treating the Live Community like the minor leagues, from which they will “promote” popular titles to official status.

Turns out my fears were unfounded as Microsoft is, in fact, allowing XNA developers to charge for their games. Of course, the devil is still in the details – why is there a price cap and a fluctuating royalty rate? – but, for the moment, I want to commend Microsoft for doing the right thing. This somewhat imperfect initiative will still change the face of gaming. Bravo.

4 thoughts on “Did Microsoft Grant My Wish?

  1. I think the problem is the reverse now. You HAVE to charge for your game if I am not mistaken. I’d love to work on some games and release them for free, without charging for them, but that is impossible.

    Many developers have language that basically says their employer owns everything they ever do in their spare time ever, so charging for something puts my job in jeopardy that probably wouldn’t matter if I released it for free. So that gets rid of one platform to develop for.

  2. Ha, I didn’t think about that. Yeah, that is a pretty big problem. Microsoft seems very concerned about giving away free stuff, in general, which is a shame.

  3. Heh, “have language that basically says their employer owns everything they ever do in their spare time ever”, this line sounds worse than anything about the Microsoft stuff.

    Spare time is my time. No one owns my time except me, the opposite sounds like fascism.

    But true, having to charge for your games is just as bad as not being able to.

  4. I am not suprised, Microsoft has managed to charge money for a lot of stuff that was previously free.

    I guess they feel, and probabally correctly, that if people release stuff that is good for free it will devalue the titles that do cost money. You have a similar situation with the map packs.

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