Xbox Live Indie Games
Xbox Live Indie Games (abbreviated as XBLIG, and previously called Xbox Live Community Games abbreviated as XBLCG) are video games created by individual developers or small teams of developers released on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox 360. The games are developed using Microsoft XNA, and developed by one or more independent developers that are registered with App Hub. Unlike Xbox Live Arcade titles, these are generally only tested within the local creator community, have much lower costs of production, and generally are less expensive to purchase. The service was released to widespread use alongside the New Xbox Experience, and as of November 2014, over 3,300 games have been released on the service, many receiving media attention. All Indie Games currently require the user to be logged in to their Xbox Live account to initiate the start-up of each game. Indie Games are not available in Australia, due to the requirement for all games to be rated by the Australian Classification Board, and the prohibitive expenses involved.
Xbox Live
Xbox Live is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. It was first made available to the Xbox system in November 2002. An updated version of the service became available for the Xbox 360 console at the system's launch in November 2005, and a further enhanced version was released in 2013 with the Xbox One.
The service was extended in 2007 on the Windows platform, named Games for Windows – Live, which makes most aspects of the system available on Windows computers. Microsoft has announced plans to extend Live to other platforms such as handhelds and mobile phones as part of the Live Anywhere initiative. With Microsoft's mobile operating system, Windows Phone, full Xbox Live functionality is integrated into new Windows Phones that launched since late 2010. The service shut down for the original Xbox on April 15, 2010, and original Xbox Games are now only playable online through local area network (LAN) tunneling applications such as XLink Kai.
Indie game
Independent video games (commonly referred to as indie games) are video games created by individuals or small teams generally without video game publisher financial support. Indie games often focus on innovation and rely on digital distribution. Indie gaming has seen a rise in the latter half of the 2000s decade, primarily due to new online distribution methods and development tools. Some games originated as indie have become very successful financially, such as Braid,World of Goo,Flow, and Minecraft.
Overview
