Successful Indie Dev Defends Microsoft, Xbox 360

Microsoft hasn’t been getting great press from independent developers lately, most notably from Jonathan Blow (Braid) and Brian Provinciano (Retro City Rampage), who didn’t have glowing things to say about trying to work with the company that created the Xbox 360. Blow stated point-blank that “Microsoft treats independent developers very badly,” while Provinciano noted that the company has an “intimidating corporate vibe.”

But not every independent developer has had trouble with Microsoft. The Behemoth, the wildly successful studio behind Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater, has come out to defend Microsoft. BeefJack stumbled upon this Raptr Q&A with the studio’s Project Manager, Emil Ayoubkhan, and Ayoubkhan paints a bit of a different picture than Blow and Provinciano.

“We have absolutely no problem with Microsoft or the XBLA team,” he said. “We love working with them, and hopefully they enjoy working with us as well. I can’t speak for other devs that may have bad mouthed Microsoft in the past, but that’s definitely not the company that we are.”

Ayoubkhan later continued, stating that, “You’ll always hear the negative side of things in the press, or from others, more than the positive aspects. It’s definitely a lot more entertaining to read I suppose.”

The Behemoth’s first game, Alien Hominid, put them on the map, but the studio didn’t find extraordinary success until it released Castle Crashers on XBLA in 2008. Castle Crashers later came to PSN in 2010 and PC in 2012, but it was on XBLA that the studio made a name for itself, and its newest game, the XBLA title BattleBlock Theater, just launched last week. It’s a very good game: we gave it a 7.8.

Colin Moriarty is an IGN PlayStation editor. You can follow him on Twitter and IGN and learn just how sad the life of a New York Islanders and New York Jets fan can be.