Rudolf Kremers, lead designer of indie game Eufloria, has claimed that it is "impossible" for independent game makers to self-publish through Xbox Live Arcade. Kremers, who founded media production company Omni Systems, highlighted the absence of any equivalent to Sony's Pub Fund - a cash reserve used to help indies publish their work - from Microsoft.
"One of the qualities of the pub fund is that it’s a viable avenue for micro-teams like ourselves, Microsoft don’t have that anymore," he told PSN Stores.
"They have XBLIG, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish when it comes to revenue. All three console manufacturers approached us, but Sony had the right balance between us keeping our creative freedom, IP ownership, whilst it still being affordable to bring it out on a console. For multiple reasons, both Microsoft and Nintendo had too many hoops to jump through.
"For Microsoft the cost would be prohibitive, as they had all sorts of mandatory features. Multiplayer and the like. And of course you have to use their QA… The cost picture would be so prohibitive that self-publishing would be impossible."
Kremers' comments follow in the wake of those of 2D Boy's Ron Carmel last week, who suggested that developers are drifting away from Xbox Live Arcade in favour of other, more open platforms such as PSN.