Funkmasonry Industries:

Big Daddio:

For a better take on it read the XNPlay posting.

On the other side of it RCAir sim got no press and no play, yet seems to be a screaming success... what do you attribute that to?

We get it! Apps are successful. Games aren't! Maybe you should give it a rest...

That's not what I am saying... apparently only your opinion matters?

The deal is perhaps people read about WoC or whatever and came to visit the site and found something else they preferred. Press and advertising != win. If it did then we'd all be drinking crystal pepsi and new coke. Yes the service can be better. MS is certainly looking at this, they are going to spend and do only what they have to . they want to be profitable, and if this is not they will either change it incrementally to make it so or drop it.

Big Daddio:

Hazy:

The reason many people are talking about "The Weapon of Choice Guy" is Nathan currently represents the best of what's possible with XBLCG

??? Really?

I am not trying to dis anyone but is a side scrolling 2d shooter the future? Maybe the deal is that the public doesn't care for the product as much as the DBP judges. Word Soup seemed to do OK, as is RC Air Sim.

We're not talking about something as subjective as best game here, WoC had the most positive press coverage including awards from IGN, it also was a DBP winner for even more press coverage, has vast amounts of content and it makes the best use of modern technology because it's not something that can be done in Flash and played for free.

With all repect to Word Soup it only represents a small fraction of what was done with WoC, which is what I'm saying, I guessed games like Word Soup would be a better investment than an epic like WoC and changed strategy to create less ambitious games than that and so headed down the smaller scale path path.

Nick Gravelyn:

Running Pixel:

Cookiecups:

Dishwasher is failure?  LOL

Dishwasher is not a Community Game, it is swimming in another pool.

His point is the article said that "XNA has failed" when XNA has now been used for at least two XBLA titles (Schizoid and Dishwasher). So XNA is hardly a failure at all (not that XBLCG is).

Right, but: Schizoid didn't sell that well (the developer was fine with sales but they were at about 60,000 if I'm not mistaken, which is not a success either for XBLA standards). Sales for The Dishwasher are at 1,500 (entires on leaderboards for first level) after half a day which is not that overwhelming either considering it was very much anticipated and part of the Days of Arcade promotion and whatnot. Sales of community games of course aren't that good either. So while I don't agree with him saying XNA is a failure I sure as hell won't say it is a huge success either. Then again it might just be the SD backgrounds and tearing of Dishwasher, that prevent the game from selling. Or maybe it will start selling later because it was originally planned for release next week.:)

It seems like if anyone doesn't agree with the herd, the herd doesn't like it. This is a discussion. There will be dissent. There is a vocal group that believe anything that cannot be classified as they see it a game, should not be allowed. Right now the top 10 only has 3 "Apps" 2 massagers and 1 screensaver. Everything else is in some sense a game. I Certainly wouldn't call Air Sim an "app". Solar is open ended play yet no one is screaming about that being an app.

That said, companies do outrageous costly marketing for products every day that fail. It could be that the people that WoC would appeal to were turned off by the lack of GamerPoints or whatever. The press for WoC did certainly raise awareness of XBLCG. Just because it didn't turn into sales for WoC doesnt mean it failed overall.

Perhaps traditional gaming press will not determine the XNA hits, perhaps new web sites, blogs, and such will matter.  Also people may be looking for stuff they can't get in other channels.  There may be whole new genres of games that come out of CG.  Maybe cloning what is already out there will not work.  Maybe any one game will not do as well as the creator hopes.

Who knows, it will be fun finding out.  And I hope Nathan starts another project on CG and sees where it goes.

Big Daddio:

Funkmasonry Industries:

Big Daddio:

For a better take on it read the XNPlay posting.

On the other side of it RCAir sim got no press and no play, yet seems to be a screaming success... what do you attribute that to?

We get it! Apps are successful. Games aren't! Maybe you should give it a rest...

That's not what I am saying... apparently only your opinion matters?

The deal is perhaps people read about WoC or whatever and came to visit the site and found something else they preferred. Press and advertising != win. If it did then we'd all be drinking crystal pepsi and new coke. Yes the service can be better. MS is certainly looking at this, they are going to spend and do only what they have to . they want to be profitable, and if this is not they will either change it incrementally to make it so or drop it.

Microsoft stated when they launched XBLCG that this was a place for new ideas, for non-traditional games. They basically said show us what you've got, get creative. For all the crying about "apps" there are 3 on the top 10 and probably only 10 total out of 200+ games. I think what people are missing here is that the system is rewarding what consumers cannot get everywhere else.

Immediately upon stating this we get the "apps" argument. Quit looking for scapegoats. Blaming games that are not like everything else has caused a few people to be banned from the service. The deal is, that what many people saw as the darlings of the service turned out not to be. What ended up being successful was a surprise to everyone. However it is what Microsoft asked for. I don't know, would more sales have changed that? Would more customers have meant that the top 10 would be quite different? I don't know but I really doubt it.

The bad press is starting to look like standard MS bashing and sour grapes. It seems to have had an effect on my sales, they are higher that usual for sunday and monday. We'll see today how tuesday played out.

I made a post about all this stuff the other day on my blog.

I'm really happy for those of you who are pleased with your sales figures, but keep in mind that there are many of us who didn't make up for our budgets and we have a right to be disappointed with a conversion rate lower than 3%. Being disappointed is not synonymous with being angry at Microsoft. Microsoft probably lost more money than anyone out of this experiment. Think for a second: all the development costs and legal loopholes they had to jump through for the past two to three years to make this happen didn't just vanish overnight when the service launched. The fact that they're giving us our full 70% across the board means they get even less. We made a number of mistakes in our game that could have made it better. Microsoft made some missteps with Community Games that could have made it better. No one is really to blame more than the other.

I'm disgusted at some of the blogs turning all of this around into a story about Microsoft failing the indie developers. It couldn't be farther from the truth. Do you see Sony or Nintendo doing anything even close to what Microsoft tried here? Maybe it didn't work out as well as some of us hoped, but you'd be crazy to not give them all the credit in the world for trying.

Indiecisive Games:

I made a post about all this stuff the other day on my blog.

I read your blog. While you are hinting the need for achievements, you blame nobody and
 you are going to find out why your game didn't sell.

I will be glad if you correct "XNA Community Games" to "Xbox Live Community Games."
Doing so differenciates your blog from other blogs you are disgusted at.

I think community game creaters should think more XboxLive-wise. You can forget about
Chris Satchell, Boyd Multerer and Dave Mitchel (I'm sorry!) if you pay more attention to
John Schappert, Major Nelson and Marc Whitten. Your community girl is Xbox Live'sTriXie
(Sorry, Cookie Cups). You can even forget XNA!

Pandapadawan:

Right, but: Schizoid didn't sell that well (the developer was fine with sales but they were at about 60,000 if I'm not mistaken, which is not a success either for XBLA standards).

If the developer is happy with it, how is that not a success? If they made enough money to be happy, that sounds like success to me.

Sales for The Dishwasher are at 1,500 (entires on leaderboards for first level) after half a day which is not that overwhelming either considering it was very much anticipated and part of the Days of Arcade promotion and whatnot.

A half day sales and you're already calling it not a success?

So while I don't agree with him saying XNA is a failure I sure as hell won't say it is a huge success either.

Every game on Xbox 360 uses XNA. XNA is the brand name for all of Microsoft's gaming technologies. The native DirectX SDK, all of the Xbox XDK, and all of the managed XNA Framework is all "XNA". It might be an annoyingly confusing branding (what with naming a subset of the brand with the brand itself), but that's what I was getting at. XNA is bigger than just XNA Game Studio.

I realise that some people were expecting more sales and from their point of view it may be viewed as a failure.

However, I prefer to focus on the more positive side.  First of all these figures are only how many sales the game has SO FAR, not how many they will sell overall.  The article says "Johnny Platform, the most successful XNA game to date, made less than $6000".  It was only released at the end of December meaning that it is making nearly $2000 per month, which is not too bad at all.

Some others that stand out are Solar which has made $2.5K in about 10 days and ZP2K9 which made nearly $6K in a month.  Are these failures? 

Community games was always going to have a wide range in terms of the quality of games and it's obvious that the poorer games are not going to rake in the money.  However, Solar and ZP2K9 prove that if you make a polished game that is fun to play you do stand a chance.

I think the point is that even $2000 a month is not very much. Not enough for community games to be any sort of sustainable business for the developer, at least.

Adrian Tsai:

I think the point is that even $2000 a month is not very much. Not enough for community games to be any sort of sustainable business for the developer, at least.

Yes, this is the point. Actually sales (but only if you're a serial best seller) are good enough for an hobbyst that works alone in its home, but are NOT enough for all the rest (small studios, pro devs).

I agree $2000 per month is not going to make you rich or sustain a team of 10 developers but if you are a solo developer $2K a month is a sustainable business. 

You also failed to comment on the other games that are earning more than that.  ZP2K9 earned $6K in its first month.  That could probably sustain a small team if it could maintain those figures.

I know it would have been nice if everyone had got rich but my point is that if some games can make a decent amount of money then there is hope for us all! 

grant:

ZP2K9 earned $6K in its first month

the first month is THE month, after this, things changes and you earn a lot less, may I remember you that our best seller does not earn more that 30k (gross I suppose)
And again, ZP2K9 is not a game made by a single hobbyst, if I'm not wrong there's a professional team behind (and you do not pay a team with $6000)

Running Pixel:

<snip>..ZP2K9 is not a game made by a single hobbyst, if I'm not wrong there's a professional team behind (and you do not pay a team with $6000)

If I'm not mistaken ZP2K9 was made by one guy, he also made The Dishwasher and ZSX4. Unless he has a secret team of outsourcers working for him $6k isn't sooo bad.

-Will

It's kind of silly that people are judging the success or failure of XBLCG based on how much money is being made when the purpose of XBLCG isn't to allow developers to make money it's to allow developers that would otherwise have no chance to get their games on a major console. Any other criteria used to judge success or failure is wrong. I don't recall anything from MS saying the purpose was to provide a source of income. All this arguing is pointless. Just go make some cool games! 8|

Jim Perry:

I don't recall anything from MS saying the purpose was to provide a source of income.

wow, now I'm really worried...

Jim Perry:

Just go make some cool games! 8|

cool games costs (time at least and time = money)

Wam Games:

Running Pixel:

<snip>..ZP2K9 is not a game made by a single hobbyst, if I'm not wrong there's a professional team behind (and you do not pay a team with $6000)

If I'm not mistaken ZP2K9 was made by one guy, he also made The Dishwasher and ZSX4. Unless he has a secret team of outsourcers working for him $6k isn't sooo bad.

-Will

It still is; your dropoff after the first month is normaly < 20% of what you made with further dropoffs after that. For instance, to break even on Braid, which was made by like two guys, the game needed to make 100k or so, and making 6k in the first month is horrible from a non-hobbyist standpoint.

You guys keep talking past each other; the problem is not for the hobbyist, the problem is simply that games are not making enough money to devote the time needed to make a Braid or Castle Crashers or even any more Weapon of Choices on there, which is a problem.

arrogancy:

You guys keep talking past each other; the problem is not for the hobbyist, the problem is simply that games are not making enough money to devote the time needed to make a Braid or Castle Crashers or even any more Weapon of Choices on there, which is a problem.

I quote, you got the point.

Jim Perry:

I don't recall anything from MS saying the purpose was to provide a source of income.

Well, this used to be on the front page of creators.xna.com if I recall correctly.  While you could argue that the money was supposed to be incidental to making the games, the slogan "Make games, Make money" gives it equal billing.

-Martin.

It doesn't say "Make Games, Get Rich" though.  Seriously, we should all thank our lucky stars we have this opportunity.  You don't get it with any other console and if you've ever tried to sell games on the PC you'll realise how hard it is to get noticed.

Fuzzy Bug:

It doesn't say "Make Games, Get Rich" though.  Seriously, we should all thank our lucky stars we have this opportunity.  You don't get it with any other console and if you've ever tried to sell games on the PC you'll realise how hard it is to get noticed.

And we're all appreciative of the opportunity, but some of us want to show we can make games as good as the big boys, which is why we've been discussing ways to up the profit potential on the service to make making an extensive game feasible.

arrogancy:

You guys keep talking past each other; the problem is not for the hobbyist, the problem is simply that games are not making enough money to devote the time needed to make a Braid or Castle Crashers or even any more Weapon of Choices on there, which is a problem.

So you're saying a hobbyist can't make a game as good as one of these? I'd challenge that.

Indiecisive Games:

and we have a right to be disappointed with a conversion rate lower than 3%.

If you have a low conversion rate you have a right to be angry with yourself, because it means that either your trial didn't sell the game enough or your game is not good at all. Seeing as there are games with a conversion rate of up to 20 % there's noone else to blame but yourself. :)