Before we announced the ID@Xbox program, we did a listening tour in 2012 with more than 50 developers to help us shape a program that really worked for developers. At the time, it felt like a lot of people! It’s almost surreal that we’re now looking at thousands of talented people working at more than 3,000 studios independently creating games for millions of players around the world on Xbox One and Windows 10 with the ID@Xbox program. It’s an amazing feeling to not only see how much the independent development scene has grown over the years, but also to be part of a program that empowers and helps independent developers continue to do what they love.

Over these past five years, we’ve seen the releases of incredible titles across every single genre imaginable – and lots of games we never could have imagined when we got started! We’re stoked that ID@Xbox is continuing to offer developers a place to share their stories in a meaningful way, helping to increase independent game discoverability and shaping Xbox One and Windows 10 as platforms that anyone can make games on and create with. We’re continuing to celebrate this momentum into the future and bring even more rad experiences to players with upcoming titles like Slow Bros.’s Harold Halibut, Capybara Games’ Below, Aurora 44’s Ashen, Black Desert from Pearl Abyss and Sable from Shedworks.

The 1,000th release this month marks an important milestone for ID@Xbox, and we’re taking the opportunity to look back on the impact our development partners and fans have had on the program:

Above all, thank you to the fans that have shown independent developers an indescribable amount of love on Xbox since day one, and thank you to the developers that keep making awesome game and giving us great feedback on a daily basis about how we can improve our program. We’re psyched to help developers bring us more surprises, more outside-of-the-box thinking and discovering new ways to push boundaries within gaming.