New Xbox Dashboard features leave Indie Games in the lurch

by David Hinkle on Dec 9th 2011 1:05AM

Now that the new Xbox 360 Dashboard is out there, many are finding the new features don't extend to Indie Games. Sure, Indies haven't supported Achievements for a while, and there's always been a price ceiling, but it looks like Beacons don't work with them, cloud storage isn't supported, and new releases don't appear under, well, new releases.

It's all in the video above, provided by GameMarx. Even that new Xbox iOS app doesn't list Indies. Why is nobody thinking of the little guys?

Source: GameMarx

Tags: dashboard, dashboard-update, dashboard-update-fall-2011, indie-games, microsoft, xblig, xbox, xbox-live, xbox-live-indie-games

Reader Comments (104)

Here we go again Microsoft... going to slowly piss off the Indie community like what you did earlier this(?) year.

They deserve more credit than you're giving them. Indie games are hell of a lot of fun and you're making them reconsider their stay every time you push them away.

@GamingColt
Agreed. Meanwhile, Sony is doing something very similar to the X-Box Indie initiative for their PSP Vita and Android platforms.

@GamingColt Seems like you're getting mad at the wrong people. Perhaps you should get mad at gamers for not buying enough indie games to make Microsoft care about them. Doesn't matter if the best game on XBL is an indie game if nobody buys it.

Does it suck the indie games are being treated this way? Yes. Can I blame Microsoft for caring so little? Not really.

While the new dashboard could be much better, it's not as bad as some people make it out to be. Most people seem to have spent ten minutes with it and yelled HULK MAD, then proceeded to the internet to rage about it. Personally I love that I can now use my Kinect to browse everything. Why it took this long I have no idea.

@GamingColt
I imagine a lot of people at ms would agree with you.
It's obvious this dashboard was marketing driven, by a UX designer who isn't a gamer (probably the same guy who did the windows phone). From an asthetics perspective its been greatly praised, so I'm sure everyone that drove this is patting themselves on the back. Those people didn't fit indie games into their requirements.

I'm sure the xna guys are pissed. That's the problem with corporations. You've got one hand not talking to the other. I see this at work all the time and its the only complaint I have about my job.....stupid marketing idiots.

@Viiral
You have a point. The only time I think about Indie games is when there is a post somewhere online about them. Maybe if they were featured occasionally I would consider buying.

Could it be that most Xbox users simply don't access the indie game library often, hence the attention deficit on a part of Microsoft??

They should be happy there's an indie section at all. It's a nascent interest at best.

Cloud storage? Really, Microsoft is not going to compromise the security of their systems by allowing indie developers to save out whatever they want to the cloud storage. They probably had to add code to restrict indie game usage of cloud storage, I doubt it's an oversight.

@GamingColt ms should give Indie games at least one 5GS "complete game" achievement. i would like my Indie games to show up on my gamertag and say i beat the game :(

@Viiral People don't buy the Indie games because 99% of them are complete trash.

@Mayo20 I usually disregard indie games until I'm told about them too. They're too much trash to shift through for the good stuff. I think I've only bought 3 or 4 indie games since they were released and I like them, but not enough to shift through all awful ones.

it's already bad enough that it's now like 8-10 button presses (directional + A) to reach the indie games menu. some of my favorite downloadable titles have come from the indie sections.

Everything seems to take a lot more button presses with this re-design, even the simplest of tasks. I don't understand the praise it has been getting, it's pretty horrible.

I can understand the desire to want to make things easier to control with the Kinect, but seriously who actually wants to control their dashboard with a bunch of gestures? Voice commands are one thing, but wow… this makes the Channels menu on the Wii look good.

@Calatia

The Wii Menu has always been good.

@tendoboy1984 No it hasn't. It's just four pages with three rows of four squares meant to accommodate everything. It's an incredibly lazy, do-it-yourself design that lacks even the most basic of sorting options.

@tendoboy1984 The Wii Channels have four big problems for me.

1: It's just drab. It looks awful on any tele, SD or HD. Especially after the update that added the clock. And it's always going to be bright, stock white and grey.

2: It is audibly offensive. It's just seriously loud, even at a low volume, the ringing is just at the right pitch to make my eyes tear up.

3. Animated icons. Yes, Ninja Gaiden 2. I know you're on NES. That's why I put you with all of the other NES games. I don't need to see an alternating console logo / title screen to remind me. Stick with the title screen so I know what game I'll be selecting without a second glance.

4. Everything requires a click through. Want to play the disc? Click the channel, then click start. Want to play Paper Mario? Click the channel, then click start. Want to download some new Virtual Consoles games which are still released all the time? Click the shop channel, then click start. Is it too hard to have a dedicated button on my Wii Remote that just lets me bypass the flashy launch screen?

Otherwise, yeah. It's just simple enough that it works.

@Calatia

Sure, but how many button presses do you have to do to find anything on the Wii menu?

@Colin You just have to make your way through the arduously slow Wii Shop Channel. Button presses and time spent work out to be about even.

@Oddgirl - The audio is probably the worst part of the Wii menu for me. I don't mind the clicking sounds, personally, but the background music (?) that plays and can't be disabled is ridiculous.

Also, yeah, the shop is just painfully slow and overly pretentious. I don't want to watch 8-bit Mario collecting coins every single time I purchase a game, especially when it's being used as a sad attempt at hiding the fact that it takes too damn long to download an NES game.

@Calatia That's what has annoyed me most about the whole thing. I liked how simple it was to access everything with the last dashboard. Ah well.

@Calatia
It's not MS's fault you don't know how to control the dash. It's much simpler now to get to everything.

Use the RB and LB to get to a category then select what you want. sheesh it's simple. Plus gesture makes it even easier! Saying "who wants to control with a bunch of gestures" is silly. I want to control it with voice and gestures, because it's simple! and it's not a "bunch" all you do is swipe and select..

I swear some people have such horrible ignorant-rage.

@Calatia

Well I'm going to disagree with you. I think this is the most logical layout the dashboard has ever had.

But I'll meet you half way and say that if they added a universal search feature in the Guide Menu and a way to pin favorites to the Guide Menu then users could have that one-click access to the content they care about.

Only other option I can think of is to have an iOS screen of chicklet buttons for every single thing on a one page UI. Count me out for that...

Indie games are by far my favorite feature of the Xbox, so this is extremely upsetting to me. I play more indie games than I do retail games... My favorite xbox games are indie games.. Makes me sad to see them get shoved in the corner. How long before Microsoft quietly remove indie games altogether.

@jurnco

Uhhh... actually XNA hasn't been updated since June 2010 and is reported to not be making it's way to Windows 8. Sooo.... next year would be my answer to that question.

It's not just the indie games. XBLA games, DLC - they're just a slow, long list now.

The new marketplace is a nightmare.

@Mike Nathan

So it's worse than PSN? Is it cluttered and unorganized? Or is it just an actual long list?

@tendoboy1984

It's not just a long list. Arcade games and DLC are organised and you can still navigate through them easily.

@tendoboy1984 It's not that bad. People just don't know what to do when change punches them in the face. They haven't taken a few minutes to actually figure out how the new dashboard works.

On a semi related note, has anyone else heard if this update is causing another wave of RRODs?

@Schlecht 2 of my friends got the rrod during the last update of the beta period

@Stuwie Not sure why I was downvoted. But anyways, two of my friends have red ringed since the update on Tuesday. That's why I was wondering. I know it happened with the original NXE.

@Schlecht

RRoD is a hardware problem that is completely unrelated to software. EVERY time MS updates the software, or a big game launches, a bunch of claims pop up that the software caused the RRoD. it's a load of BS. These claims pop up because people can't see the actual failure in their xbox or what caused it, so they just assume that the latest thing they did differently with their console caused it. That, and new games/software causes a higher rate of console use, so naturally more RRoDs will occur in a certain time frame.

Ok I'm confused. Microsoft has supported indie developers since the beginning of Xbox Live, and they did so years before Apple burst onto the scene.

After all, isn't that what Xbox Live Arcade is for?

@tendoboy1984

XBLA != XBLIG.

I have a question? can you customize in what order the list of media/music/tv/games/movies appears? (not a 360 gamer.. just curious)

@Eniko

Yes. You can sort by release date, downloads, name, rating, etc..

How issue PSN store any bad? I have zero problems

Shafted again.

And that is why I don't play Indie games on Xbox. I buy most of my indie games from Steam or Desura. Microsoft and their corporate overlord ways always destory the indie culture.

@xiLeShadow

Except when they support it?

The new Xbox 360 Dashboard Metro UI looks like a cluttered mess, just like Windows Phone 7. I like how Sony and Nintendo keep their menus clean and organized.

@tendoboy1984

The PS3s XMB is not what you would call organised. Sure every thing's under an easy to get to column, but it's also with the 20 other things in that same easy to get to column.

@tendoboy1984

The XMB is nice, but the PSN is a nightmare to navigate.

And I actually like Windows Phone 7's metro UI. It's well suited for a touchscreen. But my xbox doesn't have a touchscreen.

@This Little Man Says His Name Is Except that you can put them in customizable groups so you can easily access whatever you need. It's quick and easy to find whatever you want. Another bonus: No noise-making ads floating around the XMB.

My favorite 360 UI was the first one.

Any of the console's menus become an unusable mess whenever you own more than 10 pieces of media. It's really sad. And on the PS3 the problem is duplicated in the "Video" menu for owners of downloaded videos trying to find the Blu-Ray they just inserted amid the mess.

Navigating the new dash is a nightmare, period. Indie Games just always seem to get the worst of it. I have to use the xbox.com marketplace to queue downloads. The new marketplace is nothing to how impossible it is to find anything in my game library though. The guide button navigation is now a necessity rather than an in-game convenience - really glad we paid for those 150+ Arcade and 20+ Indie titles that we barely have access to now.

Pretty though it may be, I really, really, really, really hate using it. Please don't stick us with it for another year!

@Oddgirl

Finding things in your game library is easy. You can choose how you wish to sort it, you can just search for the name or if you want to skip past a whole group of games you can press LB or RB.

@Oddgirl
Poop. I haven't used my Xbox all week since I am being a quite studious boy who would like to be successful at exam time and make all of his parents proud of his accomplishments, but I might just have to leave it disconnected from Live now.

@Oddgirl

I agree, I find the new dashboard to be total watered-down garbage, perhaps good for Kinect, but awful for a controller.

For an example. In the last dashboard, all I had to do to join a party is hover over a friend and press Y. Now, even though it says "join party" under the person's name, I couldn't figure out how to join a party from that screen. Instead, I had to click on the person, click party options, and join party. Three more steps for no reason whatsoever. Not to mention that when friends go online while you're in the dashboard, they don't show up as an avatar right away, making me wonder why I would even bother with that piece of crap "social" menu in the first place.

Looks like I'm going to be using the guide menu as much as possible from now on.

I haven't really browsed the new marketplace. I like the new quick launch button, but I hate the new netflix app. If I want to watch a tv show, I can't choose an episode first, or even look at the description first, it loads the episode and THEN you get to mess around with that stuff. The previous interface was so much better.

@CaramelZappa Quick launch button has been around for years

@Stuwie
Yeah, it's been there when you hit the xbox button. But now there's one right on the home page, which is much more convenient considering the few seconds it takes for the xbox button's menu to load up.

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New Xbox Dashboard features leave Indie Games in the lurch

Reader Comments (104)

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:12AM GamingColt said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:43AM Polymorphic Ninja said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 4:30AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 7:43AM Cap Morgan said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 9:21AM Mayo20 said

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Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:32AM tendoboy1984 said

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Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:59AM Oddgirl said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 2:06AM Colin said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 2:13AM Oddgirl said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 5:57AM kevinski said

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Posted: Dec 9th 2011 10:35AM xreadmore said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:34PM Odog4ever said

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Posted: Dec 9th 2011 12:05PM theBrayn said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:24AM Mike Nathan said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:31AM tendoboy1984 said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:35AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 4:38AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:28AM Schlecht said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 2:25AM Stuwie said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 3:03AM Schlecht said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 3:17AM maveric101 said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:30AM tendoboy1984 said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:36AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:31AM Eniko said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 2:26AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 6:48AM 880Cloud088 said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 1:33AM Shadowbender said

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Posted: Dec 9th 2011 9:29AM Darki Dreamside said

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Posted: Dec 9th 2011 2:27AM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Dec 9th 2011 2:55AM CaramelZappa said

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