Details on Xbox Live’s XNA section transforming itself into an “indie” one have finally arrived.

The name change was announced a while ago and it seems like a fairly reasonable move. The word “indie” carries a lot more cachet than “XNA,” and “Indie Games” rolls off the tongue much more nicely than “XNA Community Games.” A bunch of nice new features were also announced such as tokens. These digital coupons come in a limited quantity and (presumably) can be sent to anyone you want, at which point (once again, presumably) they’ll be able to download your game for free.

With the oncoming user rankings, this could really improve the service, but I am very disappointed by the new price changes.

I was never big on the concept of price slots, and now they’re being shrunk down. What used to be the 800/400/200 scale is becoming a 400/240/80 one. This might be a result of so many XNA titles being little “trinkets” that resemble the $0.99 entries on iPhone AppStore, but I don’t see a reason to drop the ceiling as a whole. 800 points was not an astronomic number to begin with, and now the highest price that indie developers can charge for their XNA titles is $5. Won’t this simply increase the amount of games of dubious quality and further enlarge the rift between Xbox Live’s Indie and Arcade titles?

Then again maybe that’s the intention. Prices of Arcade games have been steadily going up, while there’ve been rumours of indie developers being shut out from the Arcade section. The lower price points might encourage experimentation, but, in the end, I don’t see them helping XNA games get closer to the overall polish and quality — at least a perceived one — of Arcade titles.

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