Disclosure: The organizers of Siggraph paid part of my expenses to Anaheim, Calif. Our coverage remains objective.
Lorne Lanning, the founder of Oddworld Inhabitants, has been a fixture in the game industry for decades (and a loud one at that). Most recently, he was quoted as saying Microsoft didn’t care about indie game developers: “It’s as if we don’t matter.” Microsoft for its part, says it does care. This week, it coincidentally decided to announce that it does welcome indie developers on the next-generation Xbox One launching this fall. And it will make it so that anyone with an Xbox One console can develop and self-publish a game.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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