Xbox Live Indie Games

The Xbox 360 store where anyone with $99 and XNA could sell a game, from Community Games in 2008 to the last day in October 2017

Shut down
19902026

Xbox Live Indie Games, launched as Xbox Live Community Games on 19 November 2008 with the New Xbox Experience, was a channel of the Xbox 360 marketplace where members of the XNA Creators Club ($99 a year) could publish games written in C# with XNA Game Studio after peer review, priced from 80 to 400 Microsoft Points, keeping 70 percent. It was renamed Indie Games in 2009 and hosted more than 3,000 titles. Microsoft announced its wind-down on 9 September 2015 and closed the store on 7 October 2017.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2008
  2. 20 February 2008 other
    Community Games announced at GDC
  3. 19 November 2008 Launch
    Xbox Live Community Games opens

    With the New Xbox Experience.

  4. 2009
  5. July 2009 Rebrand
    Renamed Xbox Live Indie Games
  6. 2015
  7. 9 September 2015 Shutdown announced
    Wind-down of XNA Creators Club and Indie Games

    Store to close September 2017.

  8. 2017
  9. 7 October 2017 Shutdown
    Marketplace closes

    A week later than planned.

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Games/XboxIndieGames, 1 June 2011 →

Browse marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Games/XboxIndieGames as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2017 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Microsoft 2008–2017 Founded Part of the Xbox 360 marketplace; XNA Creators Club membership $99 a year

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: On 9 September 2015 the ID@Xbox team said the XNA Creators Club and the Indie Games marketplace would be wound down: no new members, publishing to end in 2016 and the store to close in September 2017, with ID@Xbox on Xbox One as the successor programme. The closure, first set for 29 September 2017, was pushed to 7 October 2017 so developers could collect final payments. Xbox One had no XNA and no Indie Games channel; the store existed only on a console Microsoft was retiring.

Our analysis: Xbox Live Indie Games was the first open storefront on a games console, and it produced both the avalanche of massage apps and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT and real hits (FortressCraft, CastleMiner Z, the Bleed and Cthulhu Saves the World generation) for a $99 subscription and peer review. Microsoft buried it on the dashboard, paid 70 percent, and then built its Xbox One indie programme, ID@Xbox, as a curated invitation instead. When XNA and the 360 went, the store had nowhere to live.

History [edit]

Community Games

Microsoft's XNA Game Studio had let hobbyists write Xbox 360 games in C# since 2006, but only their friends could play them. At the Game Developers Conference in February 2008 Microsoft said it would open a channel of Xbox Live for them, and it arrived on 19 November 2008 with the New Xbox Experience dashboard as Xbox Live Community Games: any XNA Creators Club member paying $99 a year could submit a game, other members peer-reviewed it for crashes and content, and it went on sale at 200, 400 or 800 Microsoft Points, later from 80, with the developer taking 70 percent. Over 150 games were live within three months. In 2009 the channel was renamed Xbox Live Indie Games, to say what it was.

What it was, was everything: massage programs and fireplaces, avatar dress-up, dozens of Minecraft-alikes (FortressCraft sold more than a million copies), and a real generation of small games and studios, from James Silva's I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT to Zeboyd's Cthulhu Saves the World, Ska Studios, Radiangames and Ian Stocker's Soulcaster. Microsoft never quite knew where to put it: the channel was moved deep into the dashboard, was missing from several countries, had no achievements and no demo-to-full upgrade path, and by 2013 developers were writing open letters about discoverability. More than 3,000 games shipped on it.

Wound down with the 360

Xbox One launched in 2013 without XNA and without an Indie Games channel; its independent programme, ID@Xbox, was invitation-based and used the same tools as retail games. On 9 September 2015 Chris Charla and Andy Dunn of ID@Xbox announced the sunset of the XNA Creators Club and Indie Games: no new members, no new games after 2016, and the marketplace to close in September 2017. It was due to close on 29 September 2017 and was given a week's stay of execution to 7 October 2017 so that developers could receive their last payments; the games that had already been bought remained downloadable to owners.

The domain today

The Indie Games section of marketplace.xbox.com is gone; xbox.com points independent developers to ID@Xbox.

Similar projects

Xfire The gamer's buddy list 2004–2015 OnLive Cloud gaming, a decade too early 2010–2015 GameSpy The middleware that ran multiplayer, then took it away 1996–2014 PlayStation Home Sony's empty metaverse, fifteen years early 2008–2015 Google Stadia The future of gaming, cancelled 2019–2023 Sega Channel Genesis games over cable TV, $15 a month, in 1994 1994–1998

Sources [edit]

  1. Prepare for the evolution: New Xbox Experience to invite everyone in on Nov. 19 Microsoft 8 October 2008
  2. New Xbox Experience: Community Games Xbox Wire 17 October 2008 [archived]
  3. Announcing: Community Games on Xbox LIVE beta XNA team blog 1 May 2008 [archived]
  4. Microsoft shutting down Xbox Live Indie Games program Game Developer 9 September 2015 [archived]
  5. Xbox Live Indie Games gets stay of execution Eurogamer 29 September 2017 [archived]
  6. Xbox Live Indie Games Delisted Games 7 October 2017 [archived]

Last verified: 18 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).