Review and publish

For Partner Center accounts with the proper permissions, Game products support modular publishing. Modular publishing gives you the flexibility to work on different modules, such as Packages or Store listings, independently and to submit them for Certification or publishing individually. Some product types, such as Durables, don't support modular submissions and all modules must be completed and submitted together.

When you're ready to publish your product to any sandbox, including RETAIL, select the Review and Publish button in your product.

Before you begin

Before you publish your product, we strongly recommend that you review your product's Audience and Embargo settings. Use Private Audience to ensure your product can't be discovered in the Microsoft Store earlier than intended, and use Xbox Embargo to prevent unintended access to your Xbox services, like Achievements.

Publish your product with Review and Publish

When ready to publish your product to the Microsoft Store in RETAIL or a development sandbox, select the Review and Publish button near the top of the UI for any module, or on the Product Overview page.

You have the option to certify some content of your product before publishing it to the Microsoft Store. Doing so will help you identify any issues well in advance of publishing, and it will speed up the publishing process. For details on certification, see Certification (Certify). If you haven't submitted the latest configuration of a module for Certification before using Review and Publish, you might need to wait for Certification to be completed before the publishing workflow will progress.

The first time you publish your product, even when it's to a development sandbox, you'll have to publish the entire product. This means that all modules must be marked Complete: that is, they must have the minimum information required for publishing. For this, you must provide the following:

• Setup
  • Select at least one device family in Device family availability.
• Properties
  • Select at least one Genre (or Category for apps).
  • In Support info, select Yes or No for Does this product access, collect, or transmit personal information (data that could be used to identify a person)? If you select Yes, you'll have to provide a Privacy policy URL.
• Age ratings
  • Complete the questionnaire to generate ratings.
• Packages
  • Upload one package. It must have a name you've reserved for the product, and it must pass validation checks. It doesn't have to be fully functional.
• Store listings
  • Create a Store listing in one language. The listing must include a Description and a screenshot, for any device family.

Selecting the Review and Publish button will take you to the Review and publish page:

1. Select a publishing destination in the Publish to dropdown list. Select one of your sandboxes or choose RETAIL to publish to the Microsoft Store. Note that you might not be able to publish to RETAIL until your game has received concept approval.

2. In Publish from, select one of the following options:

   1. Default: to publish the content from the Main branch (this can't be changed if you're publishing to the RETAIL sandbox).
   2. Custom: to publish the content from specific branches.

You'll see a summary of the changes for each module, along with the option to select a branch (unless you selected RETAIL in the Publish from box). If you've already published your game to the Publish to destination, you can also clear the check box for any modules you don't want to publish again.

Notifications

After publishing a product, the owner of your developer account is always notified of the publishing status and required actions through email and the Action Center in Partner Center. In addition, you can add members in either developer or manager role within your developer account and they'll receive the same notifications. You can also remove those who no longer need be notified.

To add or remove:

1. On the Review and publish page, look for the field Submission notification audience. If you can’t find the field, ensure the Publish to option is selected.
2. Select Click here to open the Notification audience overview page.
3. On the Notification audience overview page, add or remove the audience.

Publishing SLAs

Each stage in the publishing process must be completed before the game can advance to the next stage. The SLAs below provide an estimated timeline for each stage.

• Processing: < 6 hours
• Certification: < 5 days - Products need to be certified before they can be published to the Microsoft Store. For details see Certification.
• Publishing: < 6 hours

Examples of publishing workflows

Simple workflow: most basic scenario

1. Create a product, and work in the Main branch for each area, without creating any custom branches.
2. Publish the Main branch to your development sandbox for review. Initially, publish the entire product; next, publish subsequent updates individually.
3. When you feel confident about the final product, submit some of the individual areas (Pricing and availability, Packages, and Store listings) for certification, to ensure there are no failures.
4. When ready, publish the game to the RETAIL sandbox to make it available in the Microsoft Store as you configured in the Pricing and availability module.

More complex workflow

In some situations, you'll have to test and iterate more extensively. Your workflow will start out as above (work in the Main branch, and then publish to sandboxes), but then you'll use branches, for more flexibility with testing options. Here's an example:

1. Create a new Packages branch (for example, "Beta Testing") where you'll try out a new version of your packages.

2. Publish Beta Testing to your development sandbox. This will let you acquire the packages in your development sandbox, and you won't have to remove the original packages from Main.

3. If the packages work well, submit Beta Testing to certification.

4. After Beta Testing passes certification, import the packages from Beta Testing into Main.

5. When ready, publish the Packages from Main to the RETAIL sandbox to make them available to all players.

Next steps

• Create and upload a game package
• Submitting to Xbox Certification in Partner Center

See also

• Action Center