The man sometimes called “the Father of Xbox”, Ed Fries, has said he’s surprised and impressed by Microsoft’s about-face on Xbox One self-publishing policies, and adds that there may not be any “big publishers” in the future.

Microsoft’s decision to remove artificial barriers to publishing content on Xbox Live demonstrated that the company was “responsive to feedback”, Fries told The [a]list daily.

“I was impressed. I was concerned that they wouldn't change, and I was impressed that they did change, and changed quickly,” said Fries. “They clearly are responsive to feedback, and I think that's great.”

Fries added that new business models such as free-to-play were fundamentally changing the videogame industry, and confirmed that he was surprised when World of Tanks was announced for Xbox 360.

“If you think about games, we used to spend three years making games and stick them in a box, and people liked them, or they didn't like them.”

“Now it's much more direct feedback from customers. We test things a lot, [we] see what's working and what isn't working, and the launch is the beginning of the process,” said Fries. “You're basically developing [the game] with your customers. We have a much more interactive relationship with our customers. If people aren't happy they let you know, and they can cause trouble for you. I think it's important for companies to be customer-focused and be known as companies that listen.”

Fries went on to say that “big publishers” could become increasingly irrelevant as physical distribution came to be trumped by digital distribution.

“Who knows if there'll be big publishers in the future?” said Fries. “There don't have to be. Maybe the world of the future doesn't look like that. Maybe it's just lots of small developers, getting together and then breaking up into little teams all over the world, that's where great games are going to come from.

“Big publishers were formed because games were really expensive, there were big distribution issues. Walmart didn't want to deal with a hundred companies, they wanted to deal with four or five. A lot of those things changed with digital distribution. Maybe what we'll see in the future isn't like what we've seen in the past. What does that mean? There are winners and losers all through that.”