A number of independent studios are upset over the revamp of the Xbox Live Dashboard, claiming the new interface has once again “hidden away” the indie marketplace. According a discussion over on the Microsoft developer forum, as its stands now, it takes around 17 button presses from the home page to access the top indie downloads available.

“Everyone knows the top downloads list is where the good money was made, if you landed high enough you could have sales for a few weeks if not months,” said Neil Jones, Monster Talk creator. “If people can’t get to this list easily then things don’t look good. Even if your game gets top rated it won’t help that much if it takes the user 16 plus button presses to find the indie game top rated list.”

The developers are also concerned over games not being listed under genres other than “indie” and are included in a list with over 2,000 other games.

“This is just a giant F-U to all of us,” lamented a Pouncing Kitten Games developer. “There is simply no other way to put it. Put 2000 plus games in a single list and give less than a half dozen filtering options, not including genre? Good call. Whoever made that decision should be fired immediately.”

Other developers seem pleased with the new interface though, citing its improved rating system and the implementation of an indie games tile.

“Overall I think it’s good – there are much more ways to reach Indie games than before the update, and there are two significant improvements to ratings usability,” commented an Awesome Games developer.

Posted: Dec 10, 2011 2:34 pm

Source: http://www.vg247.com/2011/12/09/indie-developers-upset-over-new-xbl-dashboard-interface/