I haven't seen mention of it yet, but the dashboard update that came out in the last day or so appears to have made some positive changes for XBLIG.  In Game Marketplace > Games, there now appears to be a permanent Indie tile, along with one for Arcade and Games on Demand.  And within that tile there are four sort options along with a rotating banner.  One of the sort options is Genre, which is nice to have back.

I went in to make sure that OCD actually showed up on the system and I know that I was shocked as hell that I could actually find the Indie Games section. When I saw the genres back, I almost passed out. It was nice to see that I still dominate the Card & Board game section too (1st and 3rd). thelostone started a thread, but Jim locked (I think Jim thought it was about the "screw you" dashboard update, not today's).

Now let's see if this affects sales as much as it should.

Yeah all i was saying in my post is that "Top Reviewed"  would be a better tile than "Games A to Z" for the bottom left.

Great update Microsoft. Finally somebody figured out the last Marketplace was absolute crap. Congrats to all the Indie devs making your voice heard. It definitely paid off. Personally I'm most excited to see the Genre lists again. To me that's the best part of the change. BTW, going to the Games Marketplace now defaults to the Picks tab first & no longer the Spotlight tab. And if you buy a lot of Indie games like I do, then all you see are Indie games in that list. So for some people all they will see first are Indie titles before they even get to the actual Marketplace! :D

Just had a look. In the UK (at least for me), it's still the same as before the update. Lets hope they roll it out soon. Any chance of a picture...? =)

Sounds like a fantastic update, especially for someone like me who is finishing up their first XLIG title; hooray!

Great! Not very happy with the icon selection though. They should have green background (All of them).

Thanks Microsoft!

Looks good. Curious to see how it affects our sales & downloads numbers.

This puts us on the same level as XBLA in terms of visibility. Holy crap!

Everything looks great except for a few little oddities with genre sorting. I don't really like the "featured" vs "more" genre pages. For example, platformer is on the second page, so it gets less visibility than action. As a result, we'll probably see less use of the platformer genre label in favor of listing under action. The Kinect tile bodes well, as does the Avatar tile. Clicking the Avatar tile, however, brings up the Music games.

This is how it should have been in the first place. Thank you Microsoft.

I just updated my XBox here in Germany - unfortunately no 'Genre' sort option. Actually it looks just like before the update... :( . Oh well hopefully they will update it again soon, would be nice to have a better visibility here as well.

Great to hear though that it did change in the US - one of the really important market places!

This is really good news.  I know we all felt a bit abandoned and shuffled away so this is a great action that says to me "actually, that's really not the case".  I'm even more excited about getting to a release stage with my games now!

Steve

Thank you Microsoft !!!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you !!!

USA: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/923802/WP_000350.jpg

also, as much as the improvement is nice (if you live in the land that jesus was born), the change completely removes ratings - the sub menu has

Thank you Microsoft, much appreciated. Now we just need someone to rise up and dethrone the blatant Minecraft clones and we'll get our groove back.

to 'dethrone' them in the new dash, all you have to do is release after them.

I for one am pretty happy with the change - when I first updated I was looking for the Game Type button and said to myself "OMG where did we go?!" And then I saw we are treated like real games now :)

Still all these changes have drawbacks, and I'll be the wet blanket to start that party.  Technically Mad Ninja did... but one person isn't a party, right?
Mad Ninja highlighted that Top Rated is only accessible from the "Green Buttons".  Originally I didn't think it was that bad, because Top Downloads tend to bring out the best, and I use rating as my second piece of decision making.

But just like the last dash update, the fact that two different downloads lists exist is very confusing!  When you first choose "Most Popular" you get a screen with a green button that says "Top Downloads", title that says "most popular" and a list sorted probably by  trials * conversions, or something similar.  If you choose that green button, and select Top Downloads, you get a different ordering of the menu, probably based on downloads alone.

I base my guesses off the fact that for two of my games, the one which sells more is higher in the first case, lower in the second, and my lower-converting game does the reverse.  I also find it interesting that although the newer game gets more downloads by far, the older game is always higher - meaning both lists probably include cumulative data...

My thinking since the first time a dash update scared me, is realize that someone who really wants to find your game can find it, and now its even getting easier!  As for all the other customers, microsoft will do what they will to them - seems like today they want to push MORE minecraft clones on people (maybe because they wanted the real one to release last quarter?)

Good luck with your games everyone. Thanks microsoft, please please please please let this mean we get kinect support soon!

Thank you so much! I was slightly worried about the devs here lately. I'll put extra hard work into a project just for that.

Fourth Dimensional Gaming:

Thank you Microsoft, much appreciated. Now we just need someone to rise up and dethrone the blatant Minecraft clones and we'll get our groove back.

Once Minecraft on Xbox comes out you should expect to have diminishing returns.

Mad Ninja Corp._0:

UK: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/923802/WP_000351.jpg

USA: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/923802/WP_000350.jpg

WHY U NO LOVE REST OF WORLD MS?!

In Italy we have the same layout as in UK. Baaad  :)

Thank you whoever was responsible for this change. It makes a real difference to all of us, it really is appreciated and changes how we view our future developments. Thank you.

Yep, this is awesome.  Makes more sense, easier to navigate, and easier to find what you like and buy it.

I just noticed this when I went out the play a game.

Needless to say, I almost required a change of underpants.

Thank you, Microsoft.  I will be the first to admit that most of my posts regarding things like this are usually...not the most positive, to put it lightly.  This is a welcome surprise.

Now, I could go on and state the rest of the stuff that needs work, but I'm not going to ruin the moment.  This, by itself, is a tremendous step forward. 

Thank you, Microsoft.  It appears you really do listen to us every once in a while.

Can I ask did indie games show up in quickplay before this update?  I was pretty sure they didn't but now my quickplay queue is full of indies from PR and the marketplace. Very excited to see that if it is new.

That is not a new addition. I have had XBLIG's in the Quickplay list since the Bing/Kinect Dashboard was introduced.