More than $1.4 billion has been spent on ID@Xbox games to date, according to the programme’s European lead Agostino Simonetta.
Simonetta gave the new figure as part of a talk at the GamesIndustryInvestment Summit Online. Player spending stood at $1 billion in July 2018, so the additional $400 million has been spent in less than two years.
According to the Xbox website, “The ID@Xbox Program enables qualified game developers of all sizes to unleash their creativity by self-publishing digital games on Xbox One and Windows 10 with Xbox Live, or adding Xbox Live to iOS or Android games, giving studios the tools and support needed to maximise their success.”
ID@Xbox was first announced in August 2013, and the programme has now grown to encompass 3,400 studios across 64 countries — at least one game from every continent except Antarctica has been released, Simonetta noted.
“Obviously, we are not a publisher — we are the platform.We don’t know how many are coming, or when they will come, but there’s a lot of activity,” Simonetta said.
Microsoft is aware of around 1,800 ID@Xbox games in some stage of development. In total, 1300 games have been released this way and Simonetta says Microsoft is aware of roughly 1800 games in development for the program. This number is probably bigger though, as this is only known projects and the whole point of the ID@Xbox structure is to offer a platform rather than being a publisher.