The studio responsible for last year's indie adventure/puzzle hit Machinarium says that Microsoft refused the game for Xbox Live Arcade after six months of negotiations. "They don't want to support games which aren't Microsoft exclusives," the studio chief alleges.
"Microsoft just refused Machinarium for XBLA after a half year of talking with them," Jakub Dvorsky told the site XBLAFans.com. "They like the game and know it would be very successful on their platform, but they don't want to support games which aren't Microsoft exclusives. Machinarium isn't, since we've also released versions for Mac and Linux. We have another option to approach some big publisher to bring the game to XBLA, which is quite absurd to do and lose maybe a large part of revenue because of that."
Machinarium was one of 2009's most acclaimed indie games, taking home honors for Best Visual Arts at the Independent Game Festival. Luke also loved it so much he sneaked it onto his honeymoon (check out his review of it.) If what Dvorsky's alleging is true, it sounds rather shortsighted on Microsoft's part to turn it down simply because its PC version is also on something other than Windows.
I have emailed both Dvorsky and a Microsoft rep for comment or clarification. Anything that's said will be updated here.
Machinarium Refused for XBLA [xblafans.com via GameStooge]