Dev “Rents” an XBLA Slot

Charming platformer, Pid, is sneaking onto XBLA without a publisher.

While self-publishing is all well and good on Steam and PSN, it’s a difficult prospect on Xbox Live.As per Microsoft’s policies, self-published titles are dumped into the Xbox Live Indie Games section. Considering the Indie Game section is a horrific, whirling maelstrom of Minecraft knockoffs and hastily thrown quizzes with boobs on their covers, it’s not an ideal marketplace for offbeat, co-op platformers like Pid. Not to say that the service doesn’t have any good games. It certainly does, they’re just difficult to find behind walls of crud like Baby Maker Extreme and Try Not to Fart.

Rather than make a deal with Microsoft, which chances are would require some degree of exclusivity, Might and Delight have instead “rented” and XBLA slot. As PA Report explains it, developers or publishers sanctioned to sell games on XBLA get a set number of “slots,” each of which is good for one game. Not all developers use all of their slots, and some have taken to selling their extra slots to third party developers, usually for a share of whatever profits those developer’s games might make.

So not only do Might and Delight have to share some of Pid’s profits with Microsoft, they also have to give the slot-owner their cut. That being said, according to Might and Delight, the cut the slot-owner takes is smaller than the percentage Valve takes for Steam games. And on the brightside, Pid will get the extra attention, and hopefully sales, that come with being an XBLA game, without being restricted to the 360 platform.

It’s quite clever, really, but also indicative of the ludicrous hoops a developer has to go through so much hassle just to get their game onto Microsoft’s digital service.