Indie developers have often had a bumpy relationship with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Some prominent indie developers made their frustrations very specific in a recent article titled “How certification requirements are holding back console gaming.”

“The edge that both Apple and Valve have going into the future is that they both genuinely care about the end-user experience and want to make it as good as possible,” said Braid creator Jonathan Blow. “Which coincidentally seems to be the place that these consoles are handicapped due to their corporate culture. Can anyone look at the current 360 or PS3 dashboards and legitimately say that those are products of an entity that deeply cares about user experience ”

Blow contrasted the experience with the console manufacturers to Apple, saying, “There is almost no certification process for iOS, so by the Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo theory, the apps should be crashing all the time, everyone should think of iOS as sucky, etc. But in fact this is not what is happening. There is no public outcry for more testing and robustness of iOS software.”

World Of Goo designer Ron Carmel was very negative describing working with Microsoft Studios on XBLA. “Contract negotiations [with Microsoft Studios] are drawn out and adversarial,” said Carmel. “I’ve heard many complaints about having to work with a producer, and their terms are the worst among all modern digital distribution channels.”

Derek Yu, creator of Spelunky, issued a warning about the expense in both time and money bringing his game to XBLA. “In my opinion, the entire process of console development is prohibitive-not just the expenses but also the selection process and the time invested into understanding the platform,” said Yu. “You should only do it if you have the resources and really want to be on a console.”

Source: Ars Technica