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C. Charla on promoting ID@XB titles - Why the infamous parity clause isn't a big deal

J

John Bender

Banned
ID@Xbox: "Our north star is 'make life easy for devs'"

Q: ID@Xbox is still behind Sony in terms of the number of indies on the platform; what are people still unsure of and what do you still need to do?

Chris Charla: Some of it might just be timing, and when they got dev kits. But at this point more than a thousand independent studios have gotten dev kits; we send out a ton of dev kits every day. There are hundreds and hundreds of games that have signed publishing agreements as independent publishers to bring their games to Xbox One.

What we really focus on is making life easy for independent developers. Our competitors are going to do what they're going to do and it's awesome. I've got a PS4, a 3DS and everything else but all we can do is just try and make Xbox One as great a platform and as easy as a platform for developers to work on as possible.

Our ultimate goal is that we want players to have access to a huge variety of games and the nice thing about working on ID@Xbox - for me and the whole team - is that our north star is really simple. It's just make life easy for developers and the rest will take care of itself. And so we do that, both by helping to promote them and amplify their promotion... and also doing a lot of work inside Microsoft to smooth the path for them and make sure that everything we do on Xbox, and now on Windows 10, they know what's going on, they hear tips and tricks and get the right whitepapers and everything like that.

Q: When ID@Xbox launched there was some vocal discontent about the parity clause, but that seems to have died down - are you a little more flexible on that now?

Chris Charla: I actually think we're pretty flexible. What we've always said is that we can't talk about the clause, developers should get in touch, but the reality is if a developer gets in touch and there's a situation where they can't sim-ship because they just don't have the resources to do testing across three consoles at the same time? We totally get that. And that's no problem.

If a game is not going to be coming to Xbox One for many months because there's been an exclusivity agreement signed or something like that then all we really ask is that they do something with the game so that it feels fresh for Xbox players. Developers seem to respond pretty well to that.
Click to expand...

More here
 
V

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
The bullshit is they still can't talk about the clause. If it really isn't that bad then just be open about the clause.
 
P

pastrami

Member
If a game is not going to be coming to Xbox One for many months because there's been an exclusivity agreement signed or something like that then all we really ask is that they do something with the game so that it feels fresh for Xbox players.
Click to expand...

Ask? Or demand? Will they reject a game that doesn't add something exclusive for XBox gamers?
 
C

Crimson_Gold

Member
Why even say anything at this point? Get rid of the damn thing. You're hurting your platform and robbing your customers of great games.
 
M

mreddie

Member
tumblr_n2ckosnoGx1rpt61io2_500.gif


Same as it ever was...
 
H

hawk2025

Member
Same shit, different day.

How are they supposed to determine if developers can't "sim-ship" a game?

Do they have to open their books to Microsoft?
 
P

Paskil

Member
Crimsonclaw111 said:
The same spin as ever.
Click to expand...

I mean, there really isn't much he can say, I'm sure. Putting out a PR quote is better than no comment, I guess. There were quite a few horror stories in the one thread a while back, no? At least one GAFfer had expressed frustration with developing ofr XB1?

I hope it's as flexible as he says since they really should only be trying to keep truly garbage games off the platform, rather than parity release dates and excluding if unable.
 
I

Infernostew

Member
Seems like the answers are obvious to people who have been following the whole PS indies vs ID@XBOX thing. MS was late to the game courting indies and haven't been very proactive at signing them on their own and just expect companies to come to them. Parity clause isn't going away any time soon and it seems like Sony has a lot less hoop jumping to bring indies to their platform. Chris seems like he's a good dude and does the best he can but MS as a company has a ton of red tape that he can only do so much.
 
C

Chilled_Eskim01

Member
We already knew this much though. Why don't they either make it more clear, or just get rid of it all together? Yes, we get it, MS wants the games to have some exclusive/added content when the games comes over, but that's extra work that some don't want to do, or simply can't.
 
S

Steverulez

Member
pastrami said:
Ask? Or demand? Will they reject a game that doesn't add something exclusive for XBox gamers?
Click to expand...

Well, we would need an example of MS asking/demanding and if the dev says no then what exactly happened.

Octodad bundles in the free extra shorts on other platforms and has more achievements, not that much extra, given I doubt the studio would have done the shorts later anyway and achievements aren't optional.

Odd world came out later on XB1 and was $10 cheaper too, could just be price incentives/system stuff rather than exclusive content.
 
H

hawk2025

Member
justsomeguy said:
Old quotes? We already had this thread a couple of weeks back
Click to expand...

It's a new article, as you can see by clicking the link.

He had this thread a couple of weeks ago because he said a very similar line a couple of weeks ago. Let the mods handle it if they think the thread shouldn't exist.
 
BibiMaghoo

BibiMaghoo

Member
"it doesn't matter because we just can't talk about that, but want to make life better for developers who should call us so we can give them a pass. If this situation occurs where by we can frame it to make it sound like we are the nice guys in this, then we can absolutely work together and developers seem to be receptive to selling their work and getting paid, so it's all good you see?"
 
RowdyReverb

RowdyReverb

Member
DrunkDan said:
Why can't they talk about the clause?
Click to expand...
They probably want the flexibility to privately give different offers to different studios. If they made one such offer publicly, they'd be obligated to extend the same offer to all studios that approach them. At this point, it sounds like the clause is more like a way to get into individual talks with studios to end up with unique agreements with each.
 
T

TheSpoiler

Member
RowdyReverb said:
They probably want the flexibility to give different offers to different studios, and if they made such an offer publicly, they'd be obliged to extend the same offer to all studios that approach them. At this point, it sounds like the clause is more like a way to get into individual talks with studios to end up with unique agreements with each.
Click to expand...

Too bad it's getting in the way of having most indie developers hop on their system.
 
W

wachie

Member
The Xbox division did so well in shutting up their PR people who were hurting them more than causing good, this one seems to have got through somehow. Time to get him to stop ..
 
W

whatsinaname

Member
They sounds like those salesmen at used car shops that keep parroting "Come into the dealership, we'll talk. I'll get you the best price. Trust me."
 
SerTapTap

SerTapTap

Member
The only logical assumption is that "we can't talk about it" means the actual details are more bad than good, or else they'd talk about it. If that's wrong, either talk about it, or kill it outright.

justsomeguy said:
Old quotes? We already had this thread a couple of weeks back
Click to expand...

It's not an old quote they just say the same shit every time.
 
H

hawk2025

Member
RowdyReverb said:
They probably want the flexibility to privately give different offers to different studios. If they made one such offer publicly, they'd be obligated to extend the same offer to all studios that approach them. At this point, it sounds like the clause is more like a way to get into individual talks with studios to end up with unique agreements with each.
Click to expand...

Great, but it's not our job to help them leverage their bargaining position with indie studios.

Having a nebulous clause to muddle the waters and get better deals is shitty.
 
J

justsomeguy

Member
hawk2025 said:
It's a new article, as you can see by clicking the link.

He had this thread a couple of weeks ago because he said a very similar line a couple of weeks ago.
Click to expand...

Actually yeah, there is a lot of interesting stuff in there. Just the meat of the OP quote + Title is focussing on almost verbatim quotes from a little while ago. (edit: which is fine, btw. not objecting, I just honestly thought it was a new article on old words originally).

Let the mods handle it if they think the thread shouldn't exist.
Click to expand...

ThatEscalatedQuickly.jpg
 
P

PensOwl

Banned
liquidtmd said:
The more you don't talk about the Clause, the more people speculate about the Clause.

Which does you more damage?
Click to expand...

It's not even that. Talking about it a lot would be transparent and informative, if damning on Microsoft's part. Not talking about it would sweep it under the rug at the cost of speculation and misinformation. What they're doing here is talking about it while giving not actual concrete details, which combines the worst parts of the aforementioned approaches.
 
S

specdot

Member
I feel bad for this guy. It's like Microsoft is sending him out to say the same thing over and over again, and it's probably killing him inside. I know I would feel that way. The parity clause is ass and I'm pretty sure he feels that way.
Just how Phil Spencer is being used by Microsoft to appeal to the "gamerz" and be in their good will.
 
L

liquidtmd

Banned
PensOwl said:
It's not even that. Talking about it a lot would be transparent and informative, if damning on Microsoft's part. Not talking about it would sweep it under the rug at the cost of speculation and misinformation. What they're doing here is talking about it while giving not actual concrete details, which combines the worst parts of the aforementioned approaches.
Click to expand...

Indeed. They are speculating about not talking about the Clause.
 
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