Came across this post by Amir0x on GAF regarding MS's parity clause.
NeoGAF - View Single Post - Phil Spencer: Parity is a hell of a Clause
NeoGAF - View Single Post - Phil Spencer: Parity is a hell of a Clause
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I find it so iced up how this whole thing is playing out, because it's so transparently targeted to try to shush up critics. If you ask about detail, they say they can't discuss it because everyone is NDA'd. You ask the other companies about their policies for indies, and they are open about much of this sort of stuff these days. If it was all sugar and rainbows, why is one company desperately trying to conceal the truth behind couched language and repeated garbage like what Spencer keeps saying? Then every time a dev speaks about it on neoGAF, suddenly the next day they're contacted by Microsoft, told to sign an NDA, and then suddenly it's "oh it's not so bad anymore it used to be a lot worse but now they're working with us and we can put our game on the system." At this point it seems the best route for any indie dev is basically to loudly go on neoGAF and complain about the red tape and nonsense and hoops and how many ways XBL on XBO is inconvenient compared to PSN, and then magically Phil Spencer will swoop to your twitter and caress you in his golden arms and tell you everything is going to be OK - and of course just enough swag so that you can come back on neoGAF and say it's not really that bad anymore, so people need to adjust their expectations cause it was once worse. Except of course they can't discuss specifically why, because NDA. I'm sorry but these journalists need to do their damned job already and push back against this whole atmospheric of shady dealings. How come when Spencer does this wormy nonsense mealy speech for the billionth time about talking to them, the response from the game journalist wasn't "I'm sorry this is nonsense. You can't say you don't have a parity clause and then note a scenario in which a game comes out first for your competitor and needs to talk to you if they want an exemption for adding content." This TALK TO US™ clause is battleship, full stop. This COMPLAIN ON NEOGAF FOR SUCCESS™ clause is obscene. This IF YOU WERE TIMED PS4/WII U EXCLUSIVE YOU REALLY SHOULD ADD SOMETHING TO YOUR RELEASE ON XBO BECAUSE DADDY KNOWS BEST FOR YOU™ clause is just offensive. Indies know what is best for Indies; Phil Spencer knows what is best for Phil Spencer alone. In essence, this entire discussion as it stands shouldn't even have a reason to exist. But Microsoft keeps making reasons, because they're assholes on this subject and still don't get it.