I added something to FadMaker today, and it got me thinking… Microsoft is using (at the behest of publishers, it says…) the standard console revenue model of charging licensing fees for games. But what if they simplify the process for paying licensing fees with something akin to PayPal? Independent publishers, or kids in their garages, could make shareware or simplified games for the Xbox on their own, put them up for sale as downloadable disk images on their websites, and then pay Microsoft if/when word of mouth makes the games take off.

Don’t know if it’ll happen exactly like that, but indie developers, and the potential for them to come up with games like Doom, are definitely an advantage the Xbox could have, if Microsoft is smart enough to leverage it against Sony and Nintendo….