It seems lately that Microsoft has been getting bad press from indie developers who felt that their experiences with putting games on the Xbox 360 were very negative. This Wired article in particular painted a pretty grim portrait of Microsoft's XBLA service, with the creators of Braid and Retro City Rampage putting down the company. However, at least one well-known indie developer has come forward and defended Microsoft from those who speak ill of the company.
The Behemoth, the company behind Castle Crashers and the recently-released BattleBlock Theater, recently was involved in a Raptr Q&A session, and the studios project manager, Emil Ayoubkhan had nothing but praise for Microsoft and XBLA.
"We have absolutely no problem with Microsoft or the XBLA team...We love working with them, and hopefully they enjoy working with us as well. I can't speak for other devs that may have bad mouthed Microsoft in the past, but that's definitely not the company that we are," he said. "You'll always hear the negative side of things in the press, or from others, more than the positive aspects. It's definitely a lot more entertaining to read I suppose..."
The Behemoth has always been associated with the Xbox 360, as their first major success, Castle Crashers, was released to the Xbox Live Arcade a full two years before it came to the PlayStation Network.
While Sony has been gathering a reputation as an indie-friendly company with the PlayStation 3 and now the PlayStation 4, Microsoft is apparently falling out of favor. One problem, as noted by Retro City Rampage creator Brian Provinciano, is that Microsoft is more controlling than Sony over digital titles.
"On Xbox, I'm not sure if you know about the slot setup, but pretty much, your game gets out there when they say it can. You have very little control. You're just lucky to get whatever slot you get. That one reason alone is a big factor as to why I've been able to have so much success on PlayStation and less on Xbox."
We shall see if Microsoft is able to right its reputation, or if Sony continues to shine bright for indie developers.