Xbox One owners will have to wait until 2014 to check out the console’s indie lineup.
The next-gen battle between Microsoft and Sony is still heating up, but Sony has taken a hefty lead in at least one area: indie games. Today, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Phil Harrison, told Games Industry International that he doesn’t expect any indie titles to show up on the Xbox One until early 2014.
“I don’t think we’re going to see things at launch,” Harrison said. “I don’t think it’s realistic to see a developer get the program and build a game and get it into the market on November 22. It’s reasonable to expect in early 2014 we’ll start seeing the first games come through.”
This summer, Microsoft unveiled its Independent Developers @ Xbox program, which allows small studios and individuals to publish their own titles. According to Harrison, the company has had “an avalanche of interest from all corners of the globe,” but there just isn’t enough time to take care of the logistics and allow developers to work their magic.
“Now we’re working through applications and creating that dialogue with developers,” he explained. “As we said at the time, we have phase one where we give away development kits and loan them to the teams that inevitably will have to pass some kind of a qualification to justify a limited number of dev kits being given to them.”
Only a handful of indie titles will be heading to the Playstation 4 before the end of the year. However, there are reportedly over 180 games being developed for Sony’s next-gen console, and the majority of those are independent.
But these statistics don’t worry Phil Harrison. “[The Xbox One] lineup is very, very strong. And Titanfall is turning into the huge megahit that we expected it to be.”
Source: GamesIndustry International
