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"Following reports this afternoon, Microsoft has confirmed its plans to allow self-publishing on the Xbox One , adding that additional details would be coming at Gamescom in August.

"Our vision is that every person can be a creator," Marc Whitten, corporate vice president at Xbox said in a statement. "That every Xbox One can be used for development. That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox LIVE. We'll have more details on the program and the timeline at Gamescom in August."

On Xbox 360, Microsoft's policies required developers to publish their Xbox Live Arcade titles through an established third-party publisher or through Microsoft Game Studios. In 2008, the company introduced a separate channel for smaller developers to get their games on the platform, Xbox Live Indie Games (previously Xbox Live Community Games), for titles developed using Microsoft's XNA platform also used to create Windows and Windows Phone software.

Well in advance of Xbox One's official announcement, Microsoft said it had no plans to release a new version of its XNA dev tools, leading to concerns that smaller, independently developed games would have an equally tough time finding a home on the next-generation Xbox.

Microsoft's earlier messaging on self-publishing and indie support near-complete silence, really was in stark contrast to Sony's very public embrace of indie developers. At Sony's PlayStation 4 unveiling, Braid developer Johnathan Blow showed his next title, The Witness, alongside debuts of Infamous: Second Son, Driveclub and Killzone: Shadow Fall. And at E3, a gang of indie developers took to the stage to promote games like Octodad, Transistor, Mercenary Kings and more.

Xbox One's E3 showing had signs of indie life, with Capy Games' Below and Minecraft: Xbox One Edition sharing stage time with the likes of Titanfall, Forza 5 and the next Halo game.

But the appearance of "The Indie Eight" at Sony's E3 press conference, wedged between a stunning tech demo from Heavy Rain studio Quantic Dream and announcements for Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 3, sent a resounding message: PS4 is home to both big, blockbuster games and quirky, independent titles.

Sony's PS4 messaging was crystal clear: We're catering to indie developers with simple self-publishing and readily available development kits. "Every single individual developer is a publisher as far as we're concerned," a Sony official recently said.

Microsoft's, like much of the company's official line on Xbox One, came across as lacking and, at times, alienating, focusing more on bringing TV programming and fantasy football to Xbox One at the expense of the next Braid or Minecraft.

Since E3, Microsoft has made an effort to show it's taking indie developers and self-publishing more seriously, announcing a partnership with Unity to provide free software licenses to developers if they bring their products to Xbox One, Xbox 360, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft's new plan for self-publishing, which adopts an approach more like Apple and Google's through the iTunes and Google Play app stores, brings the Xbox One's narrative more closely in line with Sony's. Microsoft and Sony are not yet on equal footing, especially from a perception standpoint, but today's announcement shows the Xbox One catching up, further willing to bend on previously outlined policies. That's good news, both for developers and future owners of each console.

With the Xbox One sharing the Windows environment alongside the now-titled "Xbox" operating system, with a hypervisor managing both operating systems, one possible way of allowing self-publishing on the Xbox One would be to allow it to run "Windows Store apps."

Microsoft has made a significant effort to deliver a unified "marketplace" across its other platforms - Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 and Windows RT. On Windows 8 and Windows RT, so-called "Windows Store apps" distinguish themselves from desktop apps by being compatible regardless of whether they're being run on an x86-powered desktop computer or the mobile ARM-powered Windows RT environment.

These apps are sold through the Windows Store, where Microsoft takes anywhere from 20 to 30 percent, depending on sales numbers, while handling things like billing and distribution, leaving developers to concentrate on the actual software. These apps are "chrome-less," fit into the "Metro" UI language (though Microsoft doesn't call it Metro anymore), and are designed to support multiple display sizes and orientations, perfect for a tablet that can be viewed in portrait or landscape mode. Unlike Xbox Live Indie Games which required using the little-known XNA programming environment, apps on the Windows Store can be coded in JavaScript, C#, Visual Basic or C++ providing devs with multiple familiar ways to create an application.

In order to publish apps on the Windows Store, developers need to pony up $49 (or $99 for businesses) annually. This is similar to the XBLIG program, the Windows Phone 8 program, Apple's iOS developer program, Amazon's developer program and others, all of which require (or required, in the case of XBLIG) a $99 annual subscription. But going through a curated marketplace means following the rules. Similar to Apple's controversial limitations on iOS apps, Microsoft enforces some problematic restrictions such as "excessive or gratuitous profanity" and "functionality that encourages, facilitates or glamorizes illegal activity.""

This is huge.