TIGSource Forums

So, the Community Games service changed name to "Indie Games", that's old news.
The new thing is that Microsoft lowered the price points for the games.
Some of you, being mostly a gamer, could think "hurray!" but NO. The max price point usable on the service is now 400ms, that's like... $5.

Basically, even if you want to do a cool game, with a lot of levels, fancy graphics and so on, you'll need to sell it at a max price of 5$.
If you want to sell it also on PC you're kind of screwed up, because you can't sell something at 20$ on PC and at 5$ on Xbox, every pc gamer will spit you in the face for that.

I think that in a dumb move to follow the App Store model on a home console Microsoft destroyed ANY possibility to have better games on the service. Now they'll get only the finest crap, forever.

Who develop an interesting game for less than 400ms? I'd rather develop it for Iphone, or sell it on PC via a digital download service at this point.
Do not forget that MS takes a share of your earnings too, so you have to sell a *shitload* of copies to make some real bucks.

With the "indie games" name change and the users rating i was thinking they really want to give the service a new spin, trying to get rid of the crapware. Now they just did the worst move they could!

Also, last but not least, they announced that XBLA has now only ~35 slot for indie games A YEAR (http://blogs.watoday.com.au/digital-life/screenplay/2009/07/14/closedshop.html).

The XNA Community game section is already ruined. It's a real car-crash of an area. :( I am sorry to say, but I actively avoid the service so far.

I know that, but there were developers actually striving to place good games, so it's a shame to see that Microsoft itself want to keep the crappiness of the service lowering the prices to 80 - 200 and 400 points... I mean, what the hell they expect to see at 80ms? Remote Massage 2.

Oh and don't forget that this area is now called Xbox indie games.

uhm i see it as a good thing


whatever, people like to complain   :-\

How is it a good thing?
People who are working on high-budget XNA games like Owlboy have less options now.

well, im not sure about everyone else but when i see a game on xbla for 400 ms points instead of 800/1200, i'll buy it without thinking(or.. less thinking)! ^.^
but whatever.

all i ever see on this forum is MICROSUCK THIS, MICROSUCK THAT

Um yeah but there was nothing stopping people from charging that before, was there? Now they just CAN'T charge more.
It's fucking bullshit, no matter how you spin it.

do you make xna games?
also max was 800 msp i think

and old games that were released for 800 (NOT THAT MANY) will stay 800

No, I guess my opinion doesn't matter then. Enjoy your shovelware ghetto.

'Tis just not right. Sure, you would buy a game for 400 mspoints or whatever the heck they are called. You might also buy one for 800! Or maybe even, gasp, 1200! Or whatever you want to buy it for! Thing is, lowering the maximum amount to charge means those aren't possibilities, eva-jolli. This seems good for customers, sure. Everything is FORCED to be cheaper! Joy joy! Thing is, now anything anyone makes is going to be lower quality. They know, or perhaps think, that money will be far harder to get. They can't justify a large budget with a larger price anymore. Any game they make has to be worth 5$ or less. That means a lower quality game. Sure, you might buy it more impulsively. But it will still roughly be less, eva-jolli. Both the developers, wanting to actually get money, and the CUSTOMERS, wanting a good game, are let down.

Does that make sense?

If $10 is too much for you then you shouldn't buy games at all.


To get back on topic: devellopers should stop making themselves slaves of hardware and portals, all I am seing nowadays is developers being fucked in the ass.
You think iPhone is different? just wait until they start doing shit moves like that (as if the whole "owning a macintosh to devellop" thing wasn't stupid enough)
Steam seems to be going this route too.
Just distribute your game on PC by internet, and try to live like that. Cliffski earned $150k in 2007 doing that (If I believe his stats). It's hard but it's the hard man's way :noir:

For an under-exposed, under-respected service, limiting the number of annual releases to roughly the number of daily iPhone releases, but still limiting the price to the socially acceptable iPhone maximum seems like a really crazy idea.  I still don't think this will affect anyone's perception of actual indie games, just seems like more bad ideas for business in general?

k since everyone is so negative about the change, here's what i think could happen:

+the new 80 ms point price point (1$) would attract attention to the service from consumers (like, me. and anyone else who hates having left over ms points)

+more attention of the service could increase sales

+the rating system could help bring the good games up

or it could be a disaster but i'm not jumping to conclusions

note that on xbox live, i have to use microsoft points. and getting these point cards isn't as convenient as handing 60$ for a retail game  :P

You know, if all they did was introduce a new $1 price point I don't think anyone would be complaining. The more options for devs the better, IMO. The issue is the $5 cap, which is just shit.

 :wtf:

Gosh, Microsoft stinks more and more.

i think you totally missed the point, or you're not a developer.


Nope, all the games will drop the price.

That move is just a way to punish developers planning to release something better than the crap that fulfill the service.

Eva-jolli i really can't see how a price cap can help increasing the quality of the service, it's bullshit

Nope, people with leftover points, and who don't already know/care about indie games, will just use their points to buy mainstream XBLA games or fancy wallpapers or whatever you can buy on this console.

Nope they're not limiting the number of indie games in the XNA section, they're limiting the number of them in Xbox Live Arcade! Possibly trying to get more developers on XNA!

exactly, you can save your 400ms points for the next recharge, and take a 1200ms points game from XBLA instead of an 800 one + a shitty 400ms stuff from the XNA service

I don't care much for XNA.

Make it work cross platform if you want it to really take off microsoft, or pop Unity support on the xbox.

reposted for truth. i don't think things like xbla, xblig, portals (including steam and including flash portals), iphone, wiiware, etc., are the gold mine indie developers treat them as, they're more of a gold rush. the best thing to do is focus on selling games to customers directly, building up your own set of fans, your own customers, not relying on others to sell your game for you. it's fine to use those services and all, but you still aren't financially independent if you're reliant only on those, because they can always take it away or change the rules randomly and you'd have nothing. whereas if you have your own set of customers who like your games and will buy any (good) game you release, you can't be bankrupted by a corporation at their whim.

Amen to that. Big companies try to establish brand recognition, I don't see why small developers shouldn't also work like this, in fact, it should be even easier to build a devoted fanbase(if not as big as the ones a larger company with a huge marketing budget can grow), because of the personal contact allowed with this size. One thing I'm looking for personally in a future indie market, is having a physical support for the game I buy- cd case with a nice label, booklet etc-. It's one of the things I liked about japanese sega saturn/psx games(compared to the us psx releases): the cds were'nt all black with white text, which maybe makes it easier to find the game you're looking for in a pile(mass consumption oriented) but makes for a very bland looking pile(not very fan/collector oriented).

People like 2DBoy do a combination of both. Consoles thrust games into the public eye if you land a deal with them.

What you want to avoid is "everyone can do it" automated portals (like XBLIG and iphone app store), but XBLA is pretty difficult to land on but worth it if you do.

This isn't anti-microsoft. I'm not happy that Nintendo and Sony don't offer any easy ways to get games onto their platforms either!  It's more disappointing that the 360 Indie Game thing is pretty much a waste of time now unless you're just doing it for practice or portfolio.

Do a little research and have a little initiative; it's not as hard as you think to get a game on their systems. The hard part is actually making the game.

Erm, I think he knows how to do that (http://wii.ign.com/articles/873/873402p1.html) already. ;)

What bothers me about the price cap, aside from the obvious, is that it seems like Microsoft is deliberately trying to make its Community (er, Indie) Games service more like the iPhone store, which is a disaster in its own right. Does Microsoft take a minimum cut out of sales from that area? It might be a way for them to up their percentage take from each sale.

eva-jolli, dude, I get your point, but we can't feed on rankings or good reviews.

Also, if you make something you're proud off (nice story, tons of levels, great ground breaking idea)... and they force you to sell it like a lousy sandwitch, how would you feel? Is like they're urinating on your work.

With that "change leftovers" criteria, you'll eventually only get obnoxious pacman clones  with a crappy twist and the such, as seen on every portal everywhere... because it will be the only affordable development that could be done for such a low earnings.
-Martín

they take 30%, plus $100 creator's club fee.

As it stands right now you can't make a living doing Community games, but Microsoft has made the bridge to make the best Community games make it onto XBLA, so it seems like XBL Indie Games might be a good jumping off point for small devs to get something on the market to try and get more money. I know of a couple small studios that are going that route.

It's not anything new that the XBLA has a limited number of slots for games, I knew that a while ago, I don't know why it's news.

 

The MS bridge from XBLIG to XBLA has never been used so far, so it's only theoretical. There have been no games that moved between the services thus far. The closest you could measure would be The Dishwasher, but they were a Dream-Build-Play winner so they were never actually ON XBLIG to begin with. Then there's the Halfbrick team who are making an XBLA game but also released a few games on XBLIG (their XBLIG games haven't done so well so far).

It's really frustrating, because I for one am one of those people who are trying to see if I can make a living through selling on XBLIG, and am currently working on a fairly substantial game effort. I don't know if I would have charged $10, but that option being taken away from me REALLY goes against the grain, because most other price points are not viable for good business with the userbase that XBLIG gets, and if I had known about this pricing structure from the start, I would have avoided XBLIG and gone a different route with my development (using XNA has some clear disadvantages when it comes to porting and even PC distribution, along with designing a game more focused towards console markets). I'm still hoping that my next title will be a success, but I've been rearranging things, considering making it episodic (split the content between two titles) while selling a higher-price point PC version that's fully featured.

How many games you know that did that jump? even the latest DreamBuildPlay winner, CarnyVale: Showtime, is still on community games.

It makes perfect contextual sense to me. It's a reset isn't it, really? Day 1 all over again.

They muffed it first time and innumerable developers muffed it too and blamed it on MS. The one thing XBLIG needs is increased uptake. Marketing won't solve everything because you're still marketing the same stuff. Rebranding alone won't solve it because it's same shit different name syndrome. It's proven already that you can't trust a lot of XBLIG developers to pick a suitable price point and if that price point is becoming a bone of contention between "will purchase" and "won't purchase" then the only sensible choice is to kill it for now.

Once you've got an established customer base then you can start nudging the price up, offering more price choices instead of 3. Someone look up this post this time next year when there's more price points in place again ;)

The problem is this should have been in place from the off and at this point in XBLIG's existence we should be seeing the price increases creeping in. As it is, they've got themselves in a pickle and need to take some drastic action to make the service work as it's supposed to. Kill switch engage, zero, zero, zero.

It won't kill the service, I've been browsing around a load of none nerd/none dev forums and there's genuine excitement for the price drops. It might cull a few haughty types from the service but for the long term, it's the smartest move MS could have made and it will benefit anyone going on XBLIG in the future.

Well, you need Microsoft's support to make the jump, and you need their green light to make XBLA games anyways. I think you will see more games making the jump in the future, its not like Microsoft threw this out the door and said "fuck it, you're on your own". I've been following XNA development for the last 3 years. I remember grilling a Microsoft rep about the service back when you still had to pay $100 to get in the creator's club, and you couldn't even charge for your game! Remember, it was only launched in November. Still, I just hate when people puff out their chest and decree things to have no value. The conversion rates for XBL Community games are half that of XBLA games, which in itself is sad. The titles with the highest conversion rates were the ones on the cheaper end of the scale, so a shift towards cheaper titles makes sense.

 

What a horribly patronising thing to say. :outraged:

The limitations of publishing on the other services are still insurmountable to many single-developer outfits without support of the platform holder.

 :D  Man, I don't think he realized who he was saying that to.  :D

an article around this argument just popped on Gamasutra

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24571

Are you allowed to download "XBLAIG" demos?

There's 8 minute trials by default of every game on the service.

XBLARGH

I'm doing an XNA game at the moment. Looking forward to releasing something on a console, something that lots of people will play using the same controller sitting on their sofas. I might even get a bit of money back which would be nice. Have released two shooters on PC, not much of an audience and sold fuck all (maybe down to quality?).

on pc you need to do some more efforts on the marketing side...

Anyway i played Mario Pac and Fren-Ze quite a lot of time ago :) i liked the latter but i didn't had a paypal account at the time, going to buy it right now dude

edit: done  :)

Bah stop that, I wasn't begging, although it's much appreciated, thankyou sir. I hope you enjoy the full game.

I'm not bothered about marketing, or really selling a lot, I don't have to rely on game sales to eat or anything. I'm happy that this XBLIG thing lets me publish to console with having to have a business and all that crap. I'd love to see more of the excellent games that members of this board make on the xbox, not really sure why they're not there (xbox cost? no gamemaker/flash?) would much rather play them there and be able to reward the authors by buying.

well you can do that also on pc, without having MS stealing a percentage...
Weapons of Choice, that's the best game on the service so far, and the most promoted one too, sold less than 10k copies, sounds quite disappointing for a game with years of development on the back, even because it was sold at few bucks.

If you don't need to do that for living, that's probably awesome, I'd do something too, but as I'm trying to live from indie development I can't bet on this service...

Oh and don't worry, i'm a fan of Danmaku shooters, and your post just reminded me of the existence of your game :)

In my case, yeah, deffo the fact that there's no "easy" route without having to get my hands dirtier with code than I've got time for.

Luckily, I got a nice offer from a talented gent to get a port in the works so y'know, sorta worked out alright in the end (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grdMyKqcmUs). Although having discovered what a tweaky anal twat I am, lord knows if there'll ever be more than one ;)

Still tempted to have a go myself but bouncing between so many things and having a chaotic life means I'm short of time on an epic scale these past few months. There's probably some mileage in punting War Bus over for 80 fakepoints, and should be quick enough to bang out. Just need the time really.

Someone steals a percentage whatever you sell on (unless maybe you get people to post you cash), Paypal or BMT or your portal or whatever. Good luck to you if you want to be pro and live off your dev, I hope you get an XBLA, PSN, WiiWare and Steam deal. For a lot of awesome stuff done for the love of it though this is a way to get it on a console with the benefits that brings: payment system built in, standard controller, fixed platform, patches etc. It IS a shame lots of the stuff on there is crappy and not up to the standard of most of the games posted over in feedback.

RobF: is SYNSO 360 online now? Looks phenomenal.

A lot of XBLIGs have better than the current XBLA conversion rates. For instance, EZMuze++ or whatever it's called has a 15% conversion rate. It's also being sold at 800 points. The average for the notable titles is 6-7%, which is fair. The problem is the low traffic due to lack of promotion/bad navigation, making it unable to find the quality titles.

This movie unfairly gimps anyone that planned a 6+ month development time for their games, though. With 50,000 trials for the most POPULAR games, it's near impossible to break even selling at 400 points, even with a great conversion rate. It means that any game you make should be a 2-4 week project now.

actually i'm not new to the industry, but i'm trying the indie way, if everything goes wrong, i'll have to search another job as coder somewhere...

Yeah the max price cap sucks, but at least microsoft didn't do away with it completely. I can't imagine that it's that profitable for them, so I'm still glad that they have it at all.

Granted, I'm not trying to strike out on my own and have indie developing fund my life, but I can't imagine anyone who is putting it all out there basing it on XBLIG.

I *don't* have it at all.

It would be nice if they actually got around to making it available in my territory before they went and ruined it? The fact that it's only accessible from a few parts of the world is what sucks the most about the XNA service.

This latest update is opening things up to a few new territories, including Germany and Japan (though Japan will get access to download from it on August 11th)

Do they still have the ridiculous "must be on xbox live" requirement? I hated that, and it's frankly prevented me from using the service before now in any case: I don't have an easy way to get the xbox connected to the internet frequently enough to play community -er, Indie games, even if they are cheap. Maybe Microsoft should fix the service before they start mucking about with it...

yeah you still need to be logged on Xbox Live