I think a big reason for the lack of sales/downloads for CG games is that the consumers are already being served quite well by Arcade. If Mr Joe Bloggs feels like buying a new game to download and play on his Xbox, he'll go to the Arcade to find something he likes. Chances are he will find something he likes there for a reasonable price so there's no need to trudge through Community Games for something decent. Arcade is the first port of call for downloadable games and there's enough good games on there so that there's no need to go anywhere else.

I'm not particularly bothered about making sales, but even so I'm not going to rely on users wandering into the CG menu and finding my game. Not sure what form of marketing will be done (I'm not personally going to pay much if anything at all for marketing) but there will be at least a website promoting the game and telling people how they can buy it.

Duffman:

I'm curious... how many of you really spent time marketing your game? Sending out press releases to various websites/magazines, doing interviews, etc. If you did any of this, did it seem to help?

I intend to be very busy with this end of things when my game goes up for review and then once it is released.

I've also got a website (which needs updating) that I will use to further show off my game. I'm wondering how many people have those.

We're only in early development of our games but a website, RSS feeds, media releases and such will primarily only get you interest from your competition. As we all know XBLCG isn't very well known yet, many Live! players don't even know about it and most of the people reading your website will be people developing other games who're interested in other projects and their market. It definitely helps once your game is released however, remember to link to your marketplace page too as people can buy your game online now from their PCs too!

I keep telling people to get in touch with journalists from gaming magazines, they're not monsters and they're not going to want a load of cash to feature your game in some small way. Make friends with them and you will be rewarded with snippets, interviews and if you're persistent an article or review. Even a small snippet in a 360 magazine is worth 10 such pieces on gaming websites. You really should focus your efforts on getting mentioned in UK and US 360 magazines (there are quite a few too!) a huge chunk of your potential market will be reading these magazines and if you can really make friends with some journalists and keep in regular contact with them you might be able to get featured during development, on release and even get mentions after release.

As for websites, of course you should try and contact them too but try to get featured in the ones that have popular 360 sections or solely focus on the 360. Remember to get a link to your marketplace page in there as I previously mentioned too.

Now back on topic, personally I don't think downloads are particularly low, many of the games simply aren't worth 200 points and when looking at the 400/800 point games we are essentially competing with XBLA games and only a handful of games released on XBLCG thus far are the same quality as your typical XBLA game.

It's still very early for statistics to be of any use and as the marketplace and the games mature I'm sure downloads will increase at an exponential rate.

I firmly believe that no-one is going to make a living from XBLCG (certainly not as the quality of the games improve and development costs increase), I'm treating it as a way to get exposure and make a little money on the side.

Psyk60:

I think a big reason for the lack of sales/downloads for CG games is that the consumers are already being served quite well by Arcade. If Mr Joe Bloggs feels like buying a new game to download and play on his Xbox, he'll go to the Arcade to find something he likes. Chances are he will find something he likes there for a reasonable price so there's no need to trudge through Community Games for something decent. Arcade is the first port of call for downloadable games and there's enough good games on there so that there's no need to go anywhere else.

This is what I feel is the main reason as well.   Like it or not CG competes with Arcade, unfortunately Arcade has the advantage in both features and promotion.

Our sole major advantage (from the perspective of reaching customers) is that we can beat XBLA thoroughly on price.  Almost all XBLA games are 800+ points--players can get four XBLCG games for that price.  I spend a lot more time looking at CG myself, in part because I already have most of the games I'm interested in on XBLA, and in part because I can get so much more for my money here.

I think with more exposure and more good games and easier ways for players to find those games, we could seriously compete with Live Arcade.

Anchorcast:

Our sole major advantage (from the perspective of reaching customers) is that we can beat XBLA thoroughly on price.  Almost all XBLA games are 800+ points--players can get four XBLCG games for that price.  I spend a lot more time looking at CG myself, in part because I already have most of the games I'm interested in on XBLA, and in part because I can get so much more for my money here.

That's a very good point, and one that I think anyone developing an 800-point game should consider. If you're investing the time and effort to make a game that's truly worth that much, there's a pretty good chance CG is the wrong place for your investment.

Based on this assumption, it's reasonable to expect lower-budget time-wasters to be the most successful endeavors. That's not to say you shouldn't strive for quality, but you should definitely keep your project's scope in check.

Excalibur Studios:

Anchorcast:

Our sole major advantage (from the perspective of reaching customers) is that we can beat XBLA thoroughly on price.  Almost all XBLA games are 800+ points--players can get four XBLCG games for that price.  I spend a lot more time looking at CG myself, in part because I already have most of the games I'm interested in on XBLA, and in part because I can get so much more for my money here.

That's a very good point, and one that I think anyone developing an 800-point game should consider. If you're investing the time and effort to make a game that's truly worth that much, there's a pretty good chance CG is the wrong place for your investment.

Based on this assumption, it's reasonable to expect lower-budget time-wasters to be the most successful endeavors. That's not to say you shouldn't strive for quality, but you should definitely keep your project's scope in check.

However, if CG doesn't get games comparable in scope to XBLA games, then chances drop of it getting a "killer app" that draws a good chunk of the press that would get casual gamers drops.

To put it simply, right now, the gaming press doesn't care about CG. And we need something to get them to care.

Also, there really isn't anywhere else where a truly independent developer can look for a chance to make decent money since XBLA, etc. tend to be closed off to unproven developers. It's worth a chance TO A DEGREE, it's just not a given.

arrogancy:

To put it simply, right now, the gaming press doesn't care about CG. And we need something to get them to care.

Quite right. I don't believe it will take an 800-point game to do that, however. A flashy, big-budget title won't do it. Awesome and well-executed ideas, however, just might.

Let's face it: potential customers are going to equate 800-point titles with the higher production values of XBLA. No CG developer can reasonably compete with that expectation. Some of them have already tried. Where are CG developers succeeding? Some really good examples include Miner Dig Deep, Solar, or Word Soup. In other words, they're succeeding with addictive game mechanics (Miner), surprising new ideas (Solar), and mass appeal (Word Soup).

CG is only a few months old, so we've not come anywhere near discovering what its developers are fully capable of. As an indie playground, it's eventually going to see some high highs in addition to the low lows (and the modest success stories) we've already encountered.

Somehow forgot to mention this before, but another reason community games are inferior to other xbox games is that you must be connected to LIVE in order to start the game. I find that a hassle, as I tend to keep my console's LAN cable unplugged (I'm slightly security paranoid). I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this. Not everyone has an always-on internet connection, either. And before you ask, I've successfully connected an xbox to a WAP in ad-hoc mode connected to a computer with Internet Connection Sharing turned on, that was connected to the net via dialup.

Anyways, the end result is that I'm loathe to walk over to the xbox and plug in the LAN cable when going thru a long list of demos I downloaded a previous day, just to play the community games. And I'm sure some people who hate, on principle, games having to dial home upon startup, will refuse to buy community games for that reason alone. As detailed in another thread, the requirement that a game be started by a profile which is LIVE enabled leads to conundrums where a game is started, then played with an offline profile, with savegames going to a profile that is unable to start up the game. I imagine they want usage statistics for these games but it doesn't have to be collected realtime, it can be cached just like newly awarded achievements are.

My guess is that they're internally testing some sort of ranking/rating where avg. minutes of demo time played and number of plays of the demo are used to infer how good a game is.

Back on topic: convenience is king. The requirement that you be online is inconvenient, and this limitation only exists (by default) for community games. People who don't like the inconvenience will be put off from stepping foot in the community games area ever again.

300% agree here.Personnaly,without this requirement I'd have bought at least several CG for local multiplayer fun.
I don't understand why they made this choice but it is really inconvenient!

Mentil:

My guess is that they're internally testing some sort of ranking/rating where avg. minutes of demo time played and number of plays of the demo are used to infer how good a game is.

Back on topic: convenience is king. The requirement that you be online is inconvenient, and this limitation only exists (by default) for community games. People who don't like the inconvenience will be put off from stepping foot in the community games area ever again.

While usage statistics and whatnot may be included, the actual reason was already explained by Stephen: http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/19178/101196.aspx#101196:

Stephen Styrchak:

Unfortunately, XBLCG titles will still require a profile be signed in to LIVE at the time the game is launched, and that profile needs to have permission to view user-generated content. If you happen to lose your connection to LIVE after the game is launched, the game will continue to run. The connection to LIVE allows us to protect people from being exposed to user-generated content that shouldn't be.

He follows that post up with another one two down that includes this:

Stephen Styrchak:

We wanted very much to enable offline play, but there was no way around this.

So know that the team isn't doing this to be mean, but rather because they have to. It's a shame, but it probably isn't going to change any time soon.

Mentil:

Somehow forgot to mention this before, but another reason community games are inferior to other xbox games is that you must be connected to LIVE in order to start the game. I find that a hassle, as I tend to keep my console's LAN cable unplugged (I'm slightly security paranoid). I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this.

This is the first time I've ever heard of anybody doing this.  You should really just leave it plugged in--the Xbox 360 has got to be virtually impossible to hack.  You're causing yourself a lot of trouble for no good reason.

However, it's true there are other legitimate reasons why people might not be able stay connected, and I really wish that MS would change this.  But as Nick said it seems unlikely that they will.

How many people do you think are actually affected by this?  I would assume that most people will never even know about this limitation.  Since you have to have Live to download these games and most people are connected any time their Xbox is on I don't see it as much of a problem.

nikescar:

How many people do you think are actually affected by this?  I would assume that most people will never even know about this limitation.  Since you have to have Live to download these games and most people are connected any time their Xbox is on I don't see it as much of a problem.

Are you serious? Don't you ever have anyone over to play on your Xbox? When my nieces and nephew come over to play, they use off-line profiles. This limitation makes it a pain, which is why I see complaints about this all the time.

Nick would like to remind the thread to get back on topic instead of discussing the LIVE requirement for start up. It's not great, but it isn't changing so you might as well discuss something else that you can change involving low download counts. Things like quality, marketing, etc.

Excalibur Studios:

arrogancy:

To put it simply, right now, the gaming press doesn't care about CG. And we need something to get them to care.

Quite right. I don't believe it will take an 800-point game to do that, however. A flashy, big-budget title won't do it. Awesome and well-executed ideas, however, just might.

Let's face it: potential customers are going to equate 800-point titles with the higher production values of XBLA. No CG developer can reasonably compete with that expectation.

Why not? I could easily make a game better than people's favorite XBLA titles (if I had the time/budget to do it). AAG was planned to be better than practically anything on XBLA before I had to stop production due to a combination of lack of DBP cash and lack of consumer interest in Community Games, and I'd still only need 4 more months or so to finish that, which isn't entirely unfeasible. The Dishwasher was made by one dude, in XNA and that's on XBLA, and, no offense to him, but I can see a lot of people here with the talent/ability to top that.

If someone has a lot of free time or something, there's no reason they couldn't match XBLA production standards. Most XBLA games are rather crappy and don't even HAVE impressive production/art design in the first place.

arrogancy:

Why not? I could easily make a game better than people's favorite XBLA titles (if I had the time/budget to do it). AAG was planned to be better than practically anything on XBLA before I had to stop production due to a combination of lack of DBP cash and lack of consumer interest in Community Games, and I'd still only need 4 more months or so to finish that, which isn't entirely unfeasible. The Dishwasher was made by one dude, in XNA and that's on XBLA, and, no offense to him, but I can see a lot of people here with the talent/ability to top that.

If someone has a lot of free time or something, there's no reason they couldn't match XBLA production standards. Most XBLA games are rather crappy and don't even HAVE impressive production/art design in the first place.

Which sums up why I'll be pitching my 'Solar' game to XBLA. Luckily I have a few friends who know about this stuff, so they can help me out, but hopefully it'll get somewhere.

I think Microsoft should really look at the successes in XBLCG and see if they can make them work in XBLA much more than they do, not just the Dream-Build-Play thing with 1 game a year, that's not enough.

Murudai:

I think Microsoft should really look at the successes in XBLCG and see if they can make them work in XBLA much more than they do, not just the Dream-Build-Play thing with 1 game a year, that's not enough.

You have to remember that XBLA is a managed portfolio. For instance, Biology Battle has a lot of work to convince Microsoft to put them on XBLA because they already have a number of dual stick shooters (Geometry Wars 1 & 2, Robotron, Smash TV, and maybe more [I don't check XBLA often]). So while you do have to have an awesome game, that game has to have mass market appeal and fit into their portfolio. It's not enough to just be successful in XBLCG.

Nick Gravelyn:

Murudai:

I think Microsoft should really look at the successes in XBLCG and see if they can make them work in XBLA much more than they do, not just the Dream-Build-Play thing with 1 game a year, that's not enough.

You have to remember that XBLA is a managed portfolio. For instance, Biology Battle has a lot of work to convince Microsoft to put them on XBLA because they already have a number of dual stick shooters (Geometry Wars 1 & 2, Robotron, Smash TV, and maybe more [I don't check XBLA often]). So while you do have to have an awesome game, that game has to have mass market appeal and fit into their portfolio. It's not enough to just be successful in XBLCG.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful for Community Games and the opportunity, but that's not an excuse. If Biology Battle is denied a place on XBLA because it's too similar to Geometry Wars, then by the same logic Call of Duty 4 should have been blocked for release on the console because it's too similar to Halo 3. The same could be said about Army of Two and Gears of War. I think the success of those titles says that similar games don't compete with each other so much as they supplement each other.

I'm not sure how much you've researched alternate publishing partners for digital distribution, but the majority of the ones I've talked to have a very different mindset about portfolio management where they judge a game by its own quality, not by the quality of the games that it could potentially be compared to. I don't want to go naming these publishers because this isn't the place to do that, but I think it's an example Microsoft should follow. The supposed problem of market oversaturation it would create could be solved by allowing games to be sorted by a Metacritic score, for instance. And if you go by Metacritic, Biology Battle is better than most games on XBLA.

Once again, with my game, this wasn't an issue because it didn't have production values anywhere near an Xbox Live Arcade title and it was never even a possibility. For me, Community Games was a great opportunity to release a game to a large audience. For the creators here who published on Community Games after being denied XBLA certification, it's bittersweet. Sure, they got their games published, but there's little doubt that their games would have performed much better on XBLA.

Indiecisive Games:

I don't mean to sound ungrateful for Community Games and the opportunity, but that's not an excuse. If Biology Battle is denied a place on XBLA because it's too similar to Geometry Wars, then by the same logic Call of Duty 4 should have been blocked for release on the console because it's too similar to Halo 3. The same could be said about Army of Two and Gears of War. I think the success of those titles says that similar games don't compete with each other so much as they supplement each other.

I don't make these calls. I'm guessing because they know that big retail titles will stand on their own despite competition that they allow it. With something like XBLA where you get, at most, one release a week it's important that you maximize sales on every title. But again, I'm just telling you what I know of XBLA.

Nick Gravelyn:

Indiecisive Games:

I don't mean to sound ungrateful for Community Games and the opportunity, but that's not an excuse. If Biology Battle is denied a place on XBLA because it's too similar to Geometry Wars, then by the same logic Call of Duty 4 should have been blocked for release on the console because it's too similar to Halo 3. The same could be said about Army of Two and Gears of War. I think the success of those titles says that similar games don't compete with each other so much as they supplement each other.

I don't make these calls. I'm guessing because they know that big retail titles will stand on their own despite competition that they allow it. With something like XBLA where you get, at most, one release a week it's important that you maximize sales on every title. But again, I'm just telling you what I know of XBLA.

There is a difference, XBLA Microsoft controls the store totally. There isn't really any competition on consoles. The AAA titles are harder, if they were to deny a WWII shooter it would become a Playstation exclusive by default. As we all know alot of gamers will pick the Xbox over the PS for the gamerpoints. They cant let that happen.

If Jason and Novaleaf had approached Microsoft with something really innovative or under represented, and not a knock off of an existing game, I bet the odds of getting an XBLA would have been in their favor.

I also really believe that the MS people expected someone to be able to recoup a $100k development budget. I think they are as surprised as we are by the actual numbers and will work to rectify it.

BTW you guys should read Steves Blog, he's the guy who made $250k on the iPhone. He is bashing the iPhone store, and his last project is dead in the water. Basically he says that it couldn't happen now.

Big Daddio:

BTW you guys should read Steves Blog, he's the guy who made $250k on the iPhone. He is bashing the iPhone store, and his last project is dead in the water. Basically he says that it couldn't happen now.

Thank you. You have just killed one of the most annoying arguments against XBLCG (i.e. that it isn't like the App Store). The guy was one of the first big "winners" in the App Store and now he's saying it's unsustainable. So do we really want XBLCG like the App Store where it starts big and starts dying off in under a year?

Nick Gravelyn:

So do we really want XBLCG like the App Store where it starts big and starts dying off in under a year?

Call me an optimist, but I see Community Games as the total opposite of that. It starts small-ish (I don't really agree that the numbers are all that bad, but that's just me), but I strongly believe that the not-so-far future will see better games and higher sales. No one's going to get rich overnight, but hard work will bring good benefits.

Catalin Zima:

I see Community Games as the total opposite of that.

I tend to agree. There are certainly growing pains at the moment, but the games that will be successful will overcome those. With DBP 09 coming up, I am hopeful that awareness will continue to increase and that more good games will be added.

I found this section of the article very interesting

Steve:

Since the AppStore opened, more and more companies have been selling their games for less and less money. Some companies promise to put out dozens of games for free or at $0.99. They do this because it's one of the only ways to get recognized on the AppStore: the "Top" rankings lists are determined by the number of units you've sold in the previous day. I'll repeat that in case you missed it -- the top rankings go by the number of units you've been able to sell in the previous day, NOT by the amount of money you've made. So there's an incentive to strive for "impulse buys" and ignore portential profit.

The problem with this is that not everyone can afford to price their games so cheaply. It's an incredible risk for an independent developer to have poured his blood, sweat, and tears into a game, and suddenly realize he's going to have to sell it below a price which he feels is fair. Many independent developers try this anyhow, and quickly see that the game has to be an absolute hit or else it will not make much money at all. Other independents reject this notion and take their chances by selling at a higher price. They may initially make a decent money, but unfortuately it factors their game out of the top lists, which is the kiss of death in today's AppStore.

It's basically the same two issue we see on community games now.. The popularity list is based on copies sold and not profit and everyone is dumping their title at 200 points thereby forcing everyone else to comply which basically ensures that no one has a chance in hell of making enough money from this to cover the development cost for a good project.

- René

Catalin Zima:

Call me an optimist

Optimist!

Catalin Zima:

strongly believe that the not-so-far future will see better games and higher sales.

Good games costs, time and money. Do you think we will see another 100k BB or Weapon of Choice? Who will risk again its money knowing what are the real numbers now?
CG future, I think, will be little and fun games made by hobbist developer; I'm not complaining, this is what I think, and I think it is not a bad thing cause this means that there will be no big names or professional studios in this swim.