Mi crosoft’s plan to open up its console ecosystem to a wider pool of game developers emerged just two years after the original Xbox launched. And it began with a disc in the post. When the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) service launched in 2004, interested players had to request the software from Microsoft. That approach would blossom considerably further, of course, in the Xbox 360 era – something with which Chris Charla was all too familiar. At the time, he was working as a producer at Backbone Entertainment, bringing arcade classics such as Joust, Defender and Robotron: 2084 to XBLA. He soon
