Why This Developer Is Skipping Xbox One

BroForce is a throwback side-scroller to the heyday of the 1980s action movie genre. It spoofs legendary film heroes such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Chuck Norris, Kurt Russell, Dolph Lundgren and more. Well, there's a reason why it isn't on the Xbox One and it is coming to the PS4.

Gaming Bolt managed to get in word with Free Live Games and question them as to why the game is on PC and why it's coming to the PlayStation 4 but why it isn't appearing on the Xbox One.

According to creative director Evan Greenwood, he explained to Gaming Bolt that...

Mostly because Sony reached out to us with a deal we couldn’t reasonably refuse,”...”“As far as I know Microsoft has a clause in their contract where they won’t accept an indie game if it launches on Xbox after Playstation.”

This has been a common occurrence for a lot of indie games this generation due to the ID@Xbox parity clause. Sony's head of developer and talent relations, Adam Boyes, has been extremely ambitious and gung-ho about getting as many indie developers exclusively on board the Sony train as possible. One of their goals is basically to fill out the PS4's library with as many games as they can and attempt to cater to a wide audience, similar to the days of the PS2.

Last year the company had already acquired 1,000 registered indie developers over Microsoft's 250 registered indie developers. Having more than four times as many developers under their wing has been a promising selling point for the console

Microsoft recently made a comeback on the sales scene, managing to nab second place thanks to a deep price-cut for November and December, allowing the Xbox One to outsell the PS4 given that the $350 price-point was just too good for some to pass up.

However, when the price goes back to normal and it comes down to a game-for-game comparison, Microsoft is still in a pretty bad place as far as their library goes. They're hoping to get this changed around, but it's going to be tough when indie devs like Free Lives aren't even giving Microsoft the time of day due to the indie parity clause, it's going to be tough for them to acquire the appropriate software library to stay competitive over the long haul.

In an update on the Gaming Bolt article, they do note that head of ID@Xbox, Chris Charla, did post on NeoGaf about the situation, basically clarifying that Free Lives never got in contact with Microsoft (possibly due to an exclusivity deal with Sony?)...

“As far as I can tell from checking this afternoon, they have never contacted ID@Xbox about coming to Xbox, so our policies don't really come into it, not really sure why they brought that up.“We've said before we want to make sure every game that wants to come to Xbox One can do it, and if developers have any questions they should get in touch with us at id@xbox.com. (And yes, I’d love to see Broforce come to Xbox One!)”

Well, as mentioned, if it's an exclusivity deal with Sony it'll be a while before we see BroForce on the Xbox One. Then again, it all depends on the deal Free Lives signed with Sony and how willing they are to port the game to the Xbox One.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.