This is my wish list for the 2009:

NXE
- Display the CG game thumbnail on players gamercard (same as how Arcade & Retail games work)
- On the friends screen, display the CG Box Art if the player is playing a CG (demo or full version)
- In the CG New Releases list do NOT show games as a New Release if they have been re-submitted
- Auto upgrade a game (so if a bug fix has been released, it should notify the player to upgrade the next time they launch the game)

XNA
- Leaderboard support
- Xbox Camera support
- Images support (i.e. being able to get and load images as textures, like the Photo Sharing app)
- Avatar support

CG Creators Website
- Daily Sales & Download stats (or have this by a daily e-mail)
- Ability to add/remove regions after a game has been submitted
- Ability to adjust game price after a game has been submitted


Any other ideas, missing features, or comments?
And please don't say Achievements thats just a bad idea no matter which way you look at it!

SniperED007:

- Avatar support

This more than likely wont happen since they don't want you doing less than reputable things with people's avatars, but you never know I could be completely wrong.

SniperED007:

- Leaderboard support
- Xbox Camera support

Both of these are a huge amount of work for minimal return. For leaderboards, I'd be willing to bet you can't use the regular ones because it would require use of the bits that XBLA games get. The problem here should be obvious. This would mean a copy of the leaderboards system would have to be made using different bits.

SniperED007:

- Ability to adjust game price after a game has been submitted

That's a good way to tick off the people that bought your game for a higher price if you drop it. I can't see that happening.

I disagree that Xbox Camera support is "a huge amount of work". All most people want is to simply be able to access the feed, and perhaps transmit a version of it to other players in a session, most of this would just be a case of wrapping the native API. Now obviously if they want to start doing clever things like face detection, gesture detection etc then that may indeed be a lot of work, but the basic stuff is just wrapping the existing APIs. Leaderboards though I agree.

I should have clarified - it's a huge amount of work for the XNA team, not us developers.

Being able to buy a game code to send to a reviewer.  Done through the Creators website, click purchase and it gives you a code that you can send to people.  They enter the code and get the copy of the game.  Maybe the cost can come out of your own points account or even from your accumlated sales.

Remyremrem:

SniperED007:

- Avatar support

This more than likely wont happen since they don't want you doing less than reputable things with people's avatars, but you never know I could be completely wrong.

This can easily be avoided by adding another checkbox to the review process to check for avatar mis-use.
Leaderboards & Camera support would go a very long way in making community games more sell-able, as well probably getting more hardware sales for the Camera.
To be able to buy the full game and receive proper leaderboard support is a huge selling point in my opinion. (It\s the only reason I never bought Biology Battle) I don't care if its a lot of work, thats not my problem, but if its going to make more sales then I want it ! :)

Jim Perry:

I should have clarified - it's a huge amount of work for the XNA team, not us developers.

I didn't misunderstand what you meant. I don't think it is a huge amount of work for the XNA team for the reasons I mentioned above. It's an API wrapping job with a bit of XNA sugar / ease-of-use on top.

I would settle for some decent floating point performance on the Xbox.  :-D

Fuzzy Bug:

Being able to buy a game code to send to a reviewer.  Done through the Creators website, click purchase and it gives you a code that you can send to people.  They enter the code and get the copy of the game.  Maybe the cost can come out of your own points account or even from your accumlated sales.

Agreed on this one. It could also act as a generic "gifting" system, sort of like Steam.

ajmiles:

Jim Perry:

I should have clarified - it's a huge amount of work for the XNA team, not us developers.

I didn't misunderstand what you meant. I don't think it is a huge amount of work for the XNA team for the reasons I mentioned above. It's an API wrapping job with a bit of XNA sugar / ease-of-use on top.

So they should be able to get that done in what, a week?

I agree with the changing the price bit... we're all new to this, we don't know what will sell and what won't. If you started at a game at 400 points and no one is buying, you should be able to lower it to 200. Conversly, if it selling like hotcakes (because apparently people really like hotcakes), you should also have the option to adjust to make the game cost more.

With regards to pricing, look at similar XBLA games and price accordingly. :) My personal advice - if the game can be priced at 200 points, do so, otherwise go with 400. There's only been 1 or 2 games that I'd price at 800.

See how easy that was. :D

"Conversly, if it selling like hotcakes (because apparently people really like hotcakes), you should also have the option to adjust to make the game cost more."

And this is done how often by publishers? By adjusting the price you're just going to tick off gamers one way or the other. It's not smart to make your customers mad.

Jim Perry:

So they should be able to get that done in what, a week?

It certainly wouldn't be particularly well tested or documented (both very important to releasing it of course), but I reckon you could have a primitive wrapper working that provided the capability to SetResolution(x,y), Update() and GetTexture() working in that sort of timeframe. We're hardly talking Content Pipeline or Networking here, both of which would have required significant amounts of non-wrapper code. It hasn't been done up until now I think because it isn't a high priority feature, not because it would take 100 man months to write/test/document, that was my point.

ajmiles:

Jim Perry:

So they should be able to get that done in what, a week?

It certainly wouldn't be particularly well tested or documented (both very important to releasing it of course),...

Which means it's only about 1/3 of the way done, that was my point. :)

Ah, don't spoil the party Jim :)  Get with the spirit of the thread :)  It is a wish list after all and not a 'Things I would like that would be dead easy for the XNA team to implement' list!

The requirement to play online seems to be ticking quite a few gamers off so that gets on my list.  Achievements would be cool as the kids seem to really dig those.  Leaderboards too.  Nice fast FP perf on 360.

My anti wishlist...

Improved GC on Xbox - anything to do with Zune.

nvm, some how i missed alot of posts

Jim Perry:

"Conversly, if it selling like hotcakes (because apparently people really like hotcakes), you should also have the option to adjust to make the game cost more."

And this is done how often by publishers? By adjusting the price you're just going to tick off gamers one way or the other. It's not smart to make your customers mad.

Introductory pricing is a valid and useful model to drive sales though.  A lot of games end up being discounted at retail early on.

"A lot"? What percentage is "a lot" and what are you basing this on?

How many XBLA game use "introductory pricing"?

I just had this idea now

what if there was a PC program that supported the release and purchasing of CG? Sort of like Steam, however designed only for XNA games.

It could also link to your gamercard. Also, if you buy a game through creator club steam, there could be a discounted rate to buy the same game for the Xbox 360 console.

Jim Perry:

"A lot"? What percentage is "a lot" and what are you basing this on?

How many XBLA game use "introductory pricing"?

Hang out on cheapassgamer.com and you'll see.  Damn near everything ends up going on sale discounted by $10-$30 for people who won't buy unless it's a deal. 

I never said anything about XBLA, I suspect Microsoft doesn't allow it as an option. I just said it was a valid model. 

Is it just me or are you unusually grumpy on this topic? (example, the snarky "So they should be able to get that done in what, a week? ")

Reality Shift:

Hang out on cheapassgamer.com and you'll see.  Damn near everything ends up going on sale discounted by $10-$30 for people who won't buy unless it's a deal. 

And XBLCG should become XBLCACG - figure out the acronym. :) We've got enough issues with people complaining about the quality of the games on the service. Adding "CA" to it isn't going to help. Going by this, everyone might as well just make their games 200 points because they're not going to get any sales until they get to that point.

Reality Shift:

I never said anything about XBLA, I suspect Microsoft doesn't allow it as an option. I just said it was a valid model. 

It might be a valid model, but is it something we want to be associated with? Personally, I wouldn't.

Reality Shift:

Is it just me or are you unusually grumpy on this topic? (example, the snarky "So they should be able to get that done in what, a week? ")

After a couple of years of listening to people talk about how much better the community would be if the XNA team just did everything they said it gets a little old. Or maybe I just need more coffee. :D

Reality Shift:

Is it just me or are you unusually grumpy on this topic? (example, the snarky "So they should be able to get that done in what, a week? ")

That's pretty much every topic.

I'd like to see the icons show up in friends history, and now playing, like normal games. Even players are asking for this on the XBox boards. Better performance of the compact runtime would be better too.

MJP:

I would settle for some decent floating point performance on the Xbox.  :-D

Me too - the current performance is nothing short of shocking.

I'd also like to see decent inlining, otherwise you're only really going to see a quarter of that floating point performance...

Daaark:

I'd like to see the icons show up in friends history, and now playing, like normal games.

This is extremely high on my wish list too.