Zen Studios Defends XBLA Following Team Meat Comments

Pinball FX developer Zen Studios has hit back at claims made by Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat earlier this week regarding its dealings with Microsoft, noting that it has had "quite the opposite experience" with the Xbox house. As part of a podcast with sister site IndieGames.com, and as reported by Gamasutra, Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes from Team Meat said that they would most likely not work with Microsoft again, due to the way they were treated. "I don't think we'll work with them ever again," McMillen told us. "We've not had one sale [on Xbox] since our initial launch sale, and I don't know if that's going to happen. Whenever we ask -- and we actively ask monthly if we can be included in a sale or get any kind of promotion -- they say no." Refenes added, "I feel the only way we'll work with Microsoft, is if it's more on our terms, which I don't feel like they'll ever want to agree with." Zen Studios, having released its title Pinball FX originally via Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service in 2007, posted in defence of the company on Twitter. "We keep reading about all these negative Microsoft XBLA experiences from guys like Team Meat," the studio tweeted. "We've had quite the opposite experience." The company pointed to a postmortem it posted on Gamasutra last month, noting that it had "a very positive XBLA experience with Microsoft." An argument ensued between Team Meat and Zen Studios on Twitter, during which the latter explained that it was "Just letting people know that there are those who are having great experiences on XBLA." "The Microsoft guys are awesome, they work super hard for us... I heard the latest [IndieGames.com] podcast and I said 'Someone has to say SOMETHING.' It's not all bad with them!" Zen Studios argued.