Steve Taylor heads up NinjaBee, the studio that put out the fantastic Xbox Live Arcade title Outpost Kaloki X. In this interview, Steve gives a look at how far Outpost Kaloki has come, starting out as a planned console release being forced to launch as a PC game download due to not being able to find a publisher willing to take the risk. We learn how important the Xbox Live Arcade is to independent developers.

Turning to the Xbox 360, you guys developed the hit Outpost Kaloki, which later hit the Xbox Live Arcade as Outpost Kaloki X. Can you give us some insight into how you go on board with Microsoft, and the process of virtually shipping a game for Live Arcade?

Originally, we designed what we thought was a pretty cool tycoon game for console play. It was aimed specifically for the console player in control and other gameplay elements. We pitched that idea to a ton of publishers, and while they were very complimentary of the game, nobody was willing to risk a traditional development budget to get the game on a console system. So we eventually redesigned the controls for the PC and released the game on our own in the PC downloadable market.

We later had the chance to show the game to Ross Erickson at Microsoft and explain our original vision for the game. He believed in it enough to get us signed up for doing Outpost Kaloki as an Xbox Live Arcade game. For us, this meant a return to the original vision we had, but also an expansion into a bunch of new areas including a ton of Xbox 360 specific features, new gameplay, new technology, new graphics, new stories, and more…

To check out the rest of the interview, head on over to Playfeed.

[tags]xbox 360,outpost kaloki x,xbox live arcade,downloadable market[/tags]