Xbox One boss Don Mattrick is pledging support for indie developers on the next-generation Microsoft gaming console and says "There's no way we're going to build a box that doesn't support" indies.
His confirmation comes on the heels of a widespread report last week that the new console won't permit independent game developers to self-publish games on the Xbox One. However, Mattrick refutes the claim and assured the indie developers that Microsoft will not skip the indie scene altogether for its new platform.
"We're going to have an independent creator program," Don Mattrick, Microsoft's head of interactive entertainment tells Kotaku. "We're going to sponsor it. We're going to give people tools. We're going to give more information."
He says supporting indie game development is very important and traced back the roots of his career trajectory to where as a young game designer, he started with racing games such as Test Drive. "That is something we think -I think -is important," he says about the indie program. "That's how I started in the industry. There's no way we're going to build a box that doesn't support that."
Microsoft has a very good track record of publishing critically-acclaimed indie-made games with Braid, Limbo and Minecraft being examples for this. The era of game console makers dictating the stringent rules for game publishing, such as every developer requiring to have a publishers, is slowing changing. Now, Sony and Nintendo both allow for self-publishing on their current consoles, provided developers meet the console-specific certification standards.
"Indie creators exist right inside our ecosystem," Mattrick says, referring to the Xbox 360 and some of its Xbox Live Arcade hits. "Probably the best example of a huge success is Minecraft. The work that Notch did [was] pretty amazing in the PC space."