Dragon Divide’s Alpha Squad is part of the Indie Game Winter Uprising and was aiming for release around the first week of December. Those of you following Dragon Divide’s twitter know this didn’t happen. You probably also know that it’s been in and out of peer review while having a hard time getting approved. This morning we received an e-mail from Steve Flores announcing that Alpha Squad has finally passed developer peer review. It should be available in the XBL Indie Games channel sometime within the next 24-48 hours. You might also want to follow Dragon Divide on twitter; I’m sure they will announce when it’s in the marketplace. We are hoping to have a review on Alpha Squad shortly after release so you should follow our twitter since our opinion is the right one (joke). In his e-mail, Steve also talked about why he joined the Indie Games Winter Uprising. I’ll leave you with that:
In 2009 I saw the opportunity that the Xbox Indie Game marketplace was providing to amateur and startup developers. Being able to develop and distribute directly (officially) on a console without being a licensee was unheard of. Unfortunately I felt that the majority of titles were not taking advantage of the opportunity and instead a number of them were quick cash grabs, such as the entire massage game “controversy” and a number of titles which were more like “Johnny’s first Xbox game”.
Each time another title like the aforementioned came on the service, another handful of possible customers were turned away from the service. Throughout the numerous message boards and word of mouth from gamers and industry vets alike, there seemed to be a consensus of a dim view regarding the quality of titles on the service. There were a few breakaway stars, but most of our possible market share were shying away from the channel. Which is unfortunate since we should have access to roughly the same 20 million+ users aside from the countries that does not have access to the indie channel.
A number of other developers felt the same way I did and thus the Indie Games Winter Uprising was formed, which Alpha Squad is a part of, albeit a little late to the party…
