After a shaky relationship that put his career and game on the line, Retro City Rampage developer Brian Provinciano joins Jonathan Blow and Team Meat in talking mess about Microsoft.
After developing RCR for over four years, Microsoft cancelled the Xbox Live Arcade release due to Provinciano publicly stating his issues with the process, Provinciano told Wired. Perhaps this was written in some contract and Microsoft wasn't out of line, but that is much harder to hold on to after what came next.
Provinciano says Microsoft made him go through a long approvals process to get the game back in the pipeline, what followed was an extra six months of negotiations and Microsoft tasked him with hunting down an outside publisher. Not exactly a warm relationship but that's the game industry. It's the last part that is the most damning: When Microsoft released the game, they priced it at $10 instead of $15. Provinciano was told this was a mistake.
On a positive note, Provinciano has found a friend in Sony and PlayStation Network: “Sony’s been incredibly supportive and promoted the game very well. It’s received a generous amount of promotion at no cost to me, from [advertisements] on the PS Store to events such as E3 and even having it playable on kiosks at every Walmart, Best Buy, GameStop, Target and Future Shop across North America.”
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via destructoid http://www.destructoid.com/retro-city-rampage-dev-s-microsoft-horror-story-251105.phtml