Games that are part of Microsoft's indie-centric [email protected] scheme have made over $1.2bn since its start back in 2013.

That's according to the programme's European boss Agostino Simonetta (pictured), who told PCGamesInsider.biz the latest milestone at Microsoft's GDC indie showcase.

At last year's GDC, the company revealed [email protected] had made $1bn, meaning that titles in the scheme have generated $200m in the last 12 months.

"We've launched over 1,000 titles and have been doing pretty well in general over five years. Last year, we launched 400 titles," Simonetta said.

"We're now at over $1.2bn in revenue, so it's been both a critical and commercial success for Microsoft and our developers as well. [email protected] is going from strength-to-strength. We added another 500-plus developers with dev kits, so we now have developers in 67 countries. Last year we launched a couple of games from Africa so we now cover every continent, not counting Antartica. We have developers from everywhere."

[email protected]'s US boss Chris Charla added: "The last year has been ridiculous and the best 12 months of the programme to date. It's just been amazing to see how the market has embraced games from independent developers on Xbox and just the broadening appeal for games. Another thing that's been cool for us to see over the last year is the effect that Game Pass has had on the ecosystem, just in terms of really being something that has broadened the visibility of games from independent developers to a mass market. People are downloading these games, playing them, enjoying them, downloading new games and genres we know that they haven't downloaded before."

You can read more about [email protected]'s last year in our upcoming interview with Simonetta and Charla