Accelerate Your Game with the ID@Xbox Developer Acceleration Program

Now in its 10^th year, the ID@Xbox program has helped foster creativity and innovation within the independent gaming community, enabling game creators to share their vision with a global audience by self-publishing digital games on Xbox platforms.

The variety of gaming experiences available to players from independent creators is truly something to celebrate. Over the last decade, ID@Xbox has helped creators of all sizes bring unique and diverse games to Xbox players around the world. As we look toward the next 10 years, we know there’s still work to do keep driving our commitment to representation and inclusion in gaming forward. This includes creating space and opportunities for new and underrepresented voices to reach and connect with new audiences, and we’re doing this by introducing additional pathways to help these emerging creators bring their creations to Xbox.

ID@Xbox Developer Acceleration Program

At the Game Developers Conference earlier this year, we announced the Developer Acceleration Program, which aims to empower underrepresented creators and help usher in a new era of originality and storytelling on Xbox. Our aim is to break down barriers for underrepresented creators, delivering access to essential resources and information to fuel their creativity and innovation on Xbox.

The Developer Acceleration Program supports teams in the following ways:

Porting

Launching a game on multiple platforms can be challenging as the investment required can conflict with other project priorities. To help emerging developers in delivering their game to as many players as possible, the Developer Acceleration Program offers non-recoupable funding to support the port of their title to Xbox. The funding does not require exclusivity or equity. Our goal is to help offset the porting investment and support the success of your console release.

We also work with developers to understand their objectives and go-to-market plans, in order to identify additional ways to support the launch of their titles, such as marketing support on Xbox-owned channels.

We started this porting initiative in 2019, and announced it as part of the Developer Acceleration Program earlier this year, to ensure we’re reaching the developers who most need our support. So far, we’ve partnered with over 100 developers, and more than 30 titles from those partners have shipped so far. We look forward to seeing these numbers continue to grow!

Learning

Developer Acceleration Program partners gain access to regular check ins, critical information, and guidance on best practices and opportunities available to help them boost their success within the Xbox ecosystem. Partners receive invites to our live virtual ID@Xbox Green Room series, where leaders from Team Xbox discuss a range of developer-requested topics—everything from marketing and certification to game sale and lifecycle management, and much more. Our leaders are available for live Q&A during the Green Room sessions, so developers are encouraged to make the most of their time!

While topics covered are not exclusive to the program, we’ve endeavored to create an opportunity for new developers with this series, where they can access key subject matter experts directly and ask questions in a welcoming environment among a group of peers.

Prototyping

The newest pillar of the Developer Acceleration Program that our team is piloting is the prototype initiative. Our goal is to support promising developers from underrepresented communities with non-recoupable funding to get innovative ideas off the ground into a working prototype. We’re currently working with a small number of partners as this is the newest addition to our program and look forward to seeing these new ideas come to life!

Reach Out

Since the inception of ID@Xbox, we’ve partnered with over 5000 studios across 100 countries, who have shipped more than 3000 games, with over 3000 more titles in active development. And to date, over $4 billion dollars have been paid to developers!

With the Developer Acceleration Program, we’re empowering more developers from underrepresented communities to be a part of this. This includes, but is not limited to, developers who are led by those from Black, Indigenous, Latino, or LGBTQIA+ communities, as well as women, developers with disabilities, developers from emerging markets, and developers creating games with a focus on accessibility.

If you’re interested in the Developer Acceleration Program and want to get in touch with our team to apply, reach out to IDAP@microsoft.com. Or if you’re ready to get started on your Xbox publishing journey, check out xbox.com/id to register.