Microsoft's Phil Harrison has told Edge that the ID@Xbox launch parity clause will persist on a case-by-case basis despite criticism from indie developers.
Harrision said he laughed at this joke about the clause from Sony's Adam Boyes:
In the interest of transparency, I want to share our Dev clause that lists which platforms you cannot release on. pic.twitter.com/cJD46rFKcl
— Adam Boyes (@amboyes) March 12, 2014
And added:
“Taking aside competitive positioning and all of that, the winners in all of this are game players. There are more games coming out for these platforms, there are more developers creating for these platforms, there are more fresh minds coming into our industry than any time in recent memory. And that’s so, so important to the future of our industry.”
The launch parity clause requires games created through ID@Xbox to be released on Xbox One at the same time as other platforms it the title is multiplatform and while developers have generally welcomed the initiative, parity remains a concern. Asked if the clause might be dropped in future, Harrison said:
“It’s difficult to debate these kind of commercial relationships in a media interview so you’ll forgive me for not going into the details. What I would say is that everybody in our program, whether it’s a developer or people on the platform side working with Chris [Charla, ID@Xbox boss] is committed to making sure the best games are on Xbox One.
“That’s our job, basically, if you boil it all down to the essence of what a game platform is, it’s to make sure that the biggest, best, most exciting, most creative games are on your platform and we are working super hard to make that happen.”
Harrison's comments follow news at last month's Game Developers Conference that Microsoft has sent ID@Xbox dev kits to 250 indies.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that Phil Spencer is to take over the entire Xbox division.
