Retrospective II

Last year, I conducted a simple retrospective for 2009. Therefore, here is a retrospective for 2010.

2010 Achievements

Publish article on XNA and TAX Receive recommendations on article Receive ITIN from IRS Extend knowledge of DirectX using PIX with XNA Upgrade to XNA 4.0 and revise breaking changes Receive Henway Xbox LIVE Indie Game payments Receive Publisher Id from GeoTrust Buy Windows Phone 7 Note: receiving an ITIN outside United States is an achievement!

2011 Objectives

Deliver game project for Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 Complete bank and tax information on the App Hub Buy Xbox Kinect if / when APIs available Integrate into game development: Test driven development Dependency injection An IoC Container Unit testing

In conclusion, 2010 was a turbulent year for independent game developers: November saw Indie Games hidden under the Specialty Shops as part of the Xbox dashboard update. Consequently, developers reported greatly diminished sales and prompted the campaign to Save XBLIG.

Fortunately, Microsoft restored Indie Games to the Game Marketplace by the end-of-the-month.

In fact, December saw the launch of the Indie Games Winter Uprising, in order to improve the quality of games on the channel. By the end-of-the-year, the Winter Uprising achieved a spotlight on the dashboard to further promote Indie Games on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

Therefore, year 2011 has the potential to be another significant year for Indie Games.
One final goal, as always: write more game code, write lots more game code J