Details on independent development for Xbox One revealed

Today, Microsoft has finally revealed the details regarding how they will deal with independent developers. The program is called, "Independent Developers @ Xbox (ID@Xbox)," and, for the most part, it looks like a pretty good deal.

Games that come through this program will be able to access the exact same features as any other large game company on Xbox One: Achievements, Gamerscore, Kinect, Xbox SmartGlass, Xbox cloud services and more.

In addition to all that access for developers, the games will be on the same marketplace as every other game, meaning they won't be dumped in some, hard-to-find, ghetto of the Xbox One marketplace. Of course, this lack of a specific category could lead to many indies getting overshadowed by bigger games, but there's no way of knowing how it all works until the system is actually out and all this jazz is right in front of our faces. But, despite all this good news, there is one massive issue with the announcement of ID@Xbox:

In an interview with GamesIndustry International, Phil Harrison said, when asked if developers will be able to set their own prices for their games,

"So the developer can set their own wholesale price and we act as the retailer. So Xbox Live acts as a reseller, and Xbox Live Store will be setting the ultimate retail price to the consumer. That's the way in which our store has always been structured."

This news isn't immediately disheartening depending on how Microsoft handles pricing, but, there is potential for Microsoft take advantage of this detail; however, doing so would only push indie developers away, so, hopefully, Microsoft acts solely as a retailer and doesn't futz around with pricing more than they should.