Inevitably, every time Microsoft redesigns the Xbox 360 Dashboard, someone suffers. There’s been plenty of talk with the latest Metro update that Microsoft seems to be favouring the console’s media applications over actual games, but spare a thought for the Indie devs, hidden away now more than ever – in some cases up to 17 button presses away from the home screen.
Mirroring similar complaints about the NXE, users have been weighing in on the Xbox and App Hub (Microsoft’s developer dashboard) forums about the issue. There seem to be a number of issues, the biggest of which there are now two different entry points to the Indie section, that both feature different content. The carousel in the Games Marketplace will eventually show an Indie Games ad, but one that only links to Kotaku’s favourites, finalists of a recent contest, and some of the latest releases. Going into the Indie catalogue under ‘game type’ just shows every single indie title in one long release date-ordered list.
In addition, indie games can now no longer be listed by genre, and do not appear under any of the ‘all content’ or ‘A-Z’ lists as Microsoft had previously told developers. The current recommendation from the Indie community is to promote your titles with “Xbox, Bing, [Game Title]”, a command reminiscent of the old AOL keyword system that can be used in the Kinect-powered Bing app, until browsing functionality is restored to the service.
You can read more over at Xbox.com or App Hub, but it’s clear that once again indie game developers have been let down in favour of bigger hitters, and more advertising in the Marketplace.
D-Nichol
The Xbox dash has gone downhill since the blades (which were great). This new one seems to be a bit of a nightmare too. The most frustrating thing about xbox live is the store. Made me realise the PS3 store (for all its faults) is actually quite user friendly