Roblox launches on Xbox One with 15 player-created games — watch us play them

Microsoft’s home console now has two games that are all about empowering a community of creators.

Roblox is live on Xbox One. Players can download it for free and start playing a list of 15 player-created games chosen by the Roblox staff. These cover a number of genres, such as action and shooter. This is the same game that Roblox fans have played for years on PC, tablets, and smartphones, but chief executive David Baszucki is hoping to get a whole new audience involved in playing and spending money in his ecosystem. And that’s important considering companies like Valve paid out $57 million in 2014 to people making items for its Team Fortress 2 shooter and Dota 2 multiplayer online arena battler.

We’ve already seen Minecraft, the Lego-like building game, turn into a phenomenon on consoles along with PC and smart devices, and Roblox touches on a similar idea. But instead of enabling players to build their own castles and forts, Roblox’s community is building games. It is a hub where you can boot up a platformer, a shooter, or an adventure game. One of the early games on the Roblox app for Xbox One is Tiny Tank. It is a team-based multiplayer shooter where squads of four must face each other in dual-stick combat.

Roblox’s games will have to go through an approval process to get on Xbox One because console games — even ones that rely on community content — are subject to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. And, obviously, Roblox doesn’t want an M-rating since it wants everyone in the family playing.

But Roblox is proud to start with 15 games, and it plans to expand that lineup in the future. And it is also proud that as Xbox One players spend money to buy Robux currency, the company will share those revenues with creators. If the game finds a sizable audience on Microsoft’s system, that could have a big effect on how much these community designers make from the game. That’s significant considering many are already making thousands of dollars working with Roblox.

To find out if this version of Roblox has any potential, we booted up the game on our Xbox One and recorded the results. Check it out: