Microsoft's Indie Man Refuses to Answer Parity Question
Chris Charla stonewalls on simple Xbox One indie question
Chris Charla is the director of ID@Xbox at Microsoft - that's the program set up to attract indie developers (e.g. people with actual creative game ideas) to publish their creative game ideas on Xbox One. His job is to communicate this. Oh dear.
One of the more interesting aspects of the ID@Xbox program is something called Day One Parity. This basically means that if you want to publish on Sony's PS4 and Xbox One, then you have to publish on both platforms simultaneously. As you can imagine this has cause something of an uproar with Indies. So Charla was asked: "How open-minded are you to scrapping the plan?" He really could not answer...
He told CVG's Rob Crossley, "So, I can't comment on our publishing policies. But I can say we're taking feedback from developers, and we're always taking feedback, and we want to make ID@Xbox as great a platform as it possibly can."
Rob asked, "Can you explain how the day-one parity clause benefits the games industry?" Mr Charla responded:
"That's almost like you're asking the same question. I really can't talk about it. We encourage developers to reach out - I can't talk to you about the policy, but I can talk to developers about it."
Then this happened:
But never fear because, when it comes to Kinect 2 and games, "I can't name names and I can't cite any concepts, but I've been shown some Kinect games and ideas that are just amazing. And I'm talking about Kinect focused games - games that are really cool, really strange, really interesting."
That's what we call "communication".
One of the more interesting aspects of the ID@Xbox program is something called Day One Parity. This basically means that if you want to publish on Sony's PS4 and Xbox One, then you have to publish on both platforms simultaneously. As you can imagine this has cause something of an uproar with Indies. So Charla was asked: "How open-minded are you to scrapping the plan?" He really could not answer...
He told CVG's Rob Crossley, "So, I can't comment on our publishing policies. But I can say we're taking feedback from developers, and we're always taking feedback, and we want to make ID@Xbox as great a platform as it possibly can."
Rob asked, "Can you explain how the day-one parity clause benefits the games industry?" Mr Charla responded:
"That's almost like you're asking the same question. I really can't talk about it. We encourage developers to reach out - I can't talk to you about the policy, but I can talk to developers about it."
Then this happened:
Why can't you talk publicly about the policy?
Public Relations: It's not something that we're talking about, we're here to discuss the development of the ID@Xbox program.
Rob: This is strange, because the day-one parity clause is the most discussed subject regarding the ID@Xbox program.
Chris Charla: And what we're doing is listening. That's all I can say right now.
But never fear because, when it comes to Kinect 2 and games, "I can't name names and I can't cite any concepts, but I've been shown some Kinect games and ideas that are just amazing. And I'm talking about Kinect focused games - games that are really cool, really strange, really interesting."
That's what we call "communication".
Companies:
Microsoft
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