Great news for smaller developers, Microsoft is reportedly going to allow indies to self publish on the Xbox One. Game Informer broke the details earlier and Microsoft didn’t seem too happy, the details were meant to be unveiled at Gamescom.

This is a very recent change apparently, older big whigs within Microsoft were outright opposing this decision a few months ago and it was repeatedly shot down behind closed doors.

There were even individuals within Microsoft who were aware of the stupidity behind their regulations – individuals who were looking for ways to make self publishing possible.

What will be interesting is just how readily available self publishing services will be. Microsoft’s official statement regarding this complete about face in policies is below:

“Our vision is that every person can be a creator,” Marc Whitten, corporate vice president at Xbox said in a statement. “That every Xbox One can be used for development. That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE. We’ll have more details on the program and the timeline at gamescom in August.”

It’s certainly astonishing to see them saying that they think every person can be a creator, months ago they were saying the complete opposite and had no plans to change. Could this be the result of the recent corporate restructuring that went down at Microsoft?

The dev kit functionality and self publishing will not be available at launch, but will be available within the first year, sources tell Polygon. If self publishing will be available to practically everyone, it brings up the question of whether or not Xbox Live will become cluttered with fart apps and such like iOS and Google Play have.

Still, there are good games on those marketplaces and this is an unprecedented step forward for Microsoft and the Xbox One as a platform. This is wonderful news for smaller developers!