Microsoft has announced some changes today for its Xbox Live Indie Game development program. The road has been difficult for Indie game developers with a less than ideal situation when competing head to head with the commercial offerings; and Microsoft has listened to Indie Game developers and made some changes to its guidelines.

The biggest change is that Microsoft has raised the size limit for a project from 150MB to 500MB, which will give Indie developers significantly more room to work with to create new projects. The next change is that Microsoft has removed the restriction that all games greater than 50MB had to be priced at $3 or $5, which made many titles a more difficult sell when compared against the other offerings. In addition, the minimum price has been lowered to just $1, or 80 Microsoft Points, which should also help Indie developers be more competitive.

Beyond these changes, Microsoft also finally raised the cap on the number games a developer is allowed to host on the Indie Game service. It has now doubled to 20 total titles, which should allow some developers more room to move.

Microsoft is hoping that these changes will be well received and will help the Indie development community continue to create even better games. We think that these moves are good and address the needs of Indie developers. If Microsoft could only find a way to call more attention to their offerings from within the dashboard, then we think Indie developers would be even happier.


Read more here in the XNA studio blog.