The story on Xbox One's self-publishing policy is still unraveling as new details are unveiled.
To start, Team Xbox's short, terse statement on their own blog referred to the swirling rumors as "news reports speculating on our future plans for independent development support". Their tone did seem to be one of surprise and noncomittal. Game Industry's Andy McNamara later tweeted that Team Xbox did not feel like talking to them about confirming or denying their story.
Even though we reached out to MS hours ago, we of course didn't get the official statement as MS is reportedly "angry" about our story
— Andy McNamara (@GI_AndyMc) July 24, 2013
And the story gets even more interesting from there. Various gaming sites than sought out feedback from various indie devs. While Vlambeer's Rami Ismail is very optimistic on the news, Retro City Rampage developer Brian Provinciano is very skeptical, revealing to Engadget and in his own tweets that he suspects the story sound better than it actually is.
Comment on the Xbox One "self-publishing" — they're not giving you the whole story. It's a good thing, but not as good as it sounds.
— Brian Provinciano (@BriProv) July 24, 2013
Proviciano makes an example of Sony allowing indies free reign to use the PS4's full RAM and other capabilities. He then reveals his suspicion that this new arrangement is XBLIG in another name. Provinciano concludes that he has no plans of working on the console at all. (I would add here as an aside that Provinciano never said anything about limits on the Xbox One RAM, just used PS4 as an example.)
While it's not possible to quantify how many developers are up on down on the Xbox One self-publishing news, it's fair to say Team Xbox still faces a lot of skepticism from indies who've had bad experiences from XBLIG before.
@GeorgeTeV Goals is to allow devs access to full pool of resources available, no indie RAM limit.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) July 25, 2013
Now, Phil Spencer is chiming in with clarifications and answers to Provinciano's assertions. Regarding RAM, Spencer's carefully worded statement is devs can use "full pool of resources available, no indie RAM limit." I would point out here that Spencer doesn't give a number to the amount of RAM available, so it's safe to say earlier announced limits to have three OSes running are still in effect.
Spencer's other tweets assuage fears about discoverability, multiplayer and the cloud.
Team Xbox really didn't want to talk about their indie policy yet, and likely desire to stem the flow of information until gamescom. Ironically, it's this secrecy that has kept skeptics at an arm's length. We'll see if insisting to wait until the event is worth it.
