The Xbox Live Creators Program Sparks Into Life

The Xbox Live Creators Program was announced earlier this year during the Game Developers Conference. It allows indie devs to self publish their titles on both the Xbox One and Windows 10 using Windows Universal Apps. The Creators Program differs from the ID@Xbox Program as there is no concept approval required from Microsoft to bring a game to the Market Place. This basically makes the whole process a lot faster but there are draw backs too, which we will get to in a bit.

The first titles to come out of the program have landed on the Xbox One today and thanks to the guys and girls over at Windows Central we know what they are. The games are only available to those in the Alpha Ring of the Xbox Insiders Program at the minute. The new titles can be found inside a new section of the Xbox Store under the name "The Creators Collection". The first six titles to hit the new section of the Store are as follows, Whispers In The Dark, Stereo Aereo, Animal Rivals, Derelict Fleet, Space Cat and Solitaire HD. Dev's that are developing for the Creators Program are entitled to charge for their games but having said that, half of the six games listed above are completely free to download and play.

Now to some bad news I'm afraid, because there is no concept approval needed from Microsoft to get a game released, the Creators Collection games are inflicted with bugs and glitches at the minute. I suppose this is to be expected after all due to the hands off approach being employed by Microsoft. This is different to the ID@Xbox program, where developers work with hand in hand with Microsoft to bring their games to Xbox Live. ID@Xbox games are built with Live in mind, most titles have multiplayer, all of them have achievements. The Creators Collection titles have neither folks but they do have the option to enter the ID@Xbox program if they like, doing so gives them all the benefits of Xbox Live.

Hopefully these new indie games take off. There are a lot of very talented bedroom developers out there and this program gives them a chance to show their games to the world. Sure, some quality control may be needed but this is still very early days. Fingers crossed, in time we might see some classics coming out of it.

Have you had a chance to try out these new Creator Collection games, please feel free to leave any thoughts you have in the comments below.

Image From cnet.com