Update: According to Chris, they’ve been less-buried, but apparently “Indie” is still a genre where all games are the same.
Indie developers, who are responsible for great games like Terraria, VVVVVV, Minecraft, Spelunkey, La Mulana, Koumajou Densetsu, and who also get a lot of love from the internet’s many users are an important part of the gaming industry and growing. Whoever designed the XBox Marketplace missed that memo.
An update to the marketplace boasts deliberately poor site design, requiring a total of 17 presses to reach the section for indie games. To put into perspective, it takes half the presses to reach Arcade and Games on Demand.
Indie developers are worried about how this will affect sales, that they will only be found by those who know exactly what they’re looking for. In addition, you can’t search indie games by genre, meaning Cthulhu Saves the World and Super Meat Boy are on the same and sole list. The update is still in beta, so this may change in the future if enough gamers fire mortar shells at Microsoft’s main office.
A list of common complaints include the fact that indie games don’t show up in Genre or A-Z, that they cannot be searched by genre, and the only list has the entire amount sorted by release date only. Nice going Microsoft, some people make games not wrangled up by a bitchy publisher and get brilliant reviews, and you don’t give them the love they deserve. You make Captain Viridian sad.
Chris Hernandez
They must have updated since this post, as it only took me 7 presses and all sections are in the same area.
Though it is terrible they are still ignoring Indie games as they are not listed in any other section outside of selecting Indie games specifically.
Rian Quenlin
Likely they have. I’ll note that, thanks, I don’t have a 360 myself.