I think this may be a more interesting topic:

Why do Indie games get relatively few trial downloads?

Here's my possible reasons:

1. Not enough exposure on main dashboard (no featured games)
2. Bad reputation (customers think all the games are bad when they're not)
3. Bad games (customers think all the games are bad and they ARE) - I don't personally believe this
4. No gamer points (customers would rather spend money on games that will raise their gamer score)
5. Economy (customers can't afford the $1 to $5 price of an Indie game)
6. It's too early - customers will come eventually

Most customers have no idea that Xbox Indie Games exist.

Captain Comic:

1. Not enough exposure on main dashboard (no featured games)
2. Bad reputation (customers think all the games are bad when they're not)
3. Bad games (customers think all the games are bad and they ARE) - I don't personally believe this
4. No gamer points (customers would rather spend money on games that will raise their gamer score)
5. Economy (customers can't afford the $1 to $5 price of an Indie game)
6. It's too early - customers will come eventually

Or Option 7, Creators haven't promoted their games. All of the other possible reasons you have absolutely no impact over.

Pheel:

Or Option 7, Creators haven't promoted their games. All of the other possible reasons you have absolutely no impact over.

I agree to a point, but I was really talking about the Indie games channel as a whole.

I know that there are a lot of sites that review Indie games, and I hope they eventually choose to review mine, but they preach to the converted in the sense that people who read the reviews are probably already interested in the Indie games channel anyway.

My list was compiled from the assumption that a lot of people know about the Indie games channel, but just choose not to browse it. Others may not know about it at all. These are the people that I'd like to see come to the channel.

Is there something that we can do as a group that can lift Indie game channel awareness to the Xbox player at large?

For example, here's an idea: Give out tokens for random Indie games to the crowd during 1 vs 100.

Pheel:

Or Option 7, Creators haven't promoted their games. All of the other possible reasons you have absolutely no impact over.

This. How you promote it also matters. If you don't show players where your game is in the NXE interface, they may not take the time to try to find it.

Captain Comic:

My list was compiled from the assumption that a lot of people know about the Indie games channel, but just choose not to browse it.

Is that a safe assumption though? How do you know/determine this?

I choose options 3 and 7. It is all your fault.

Ok, a little of option 1 would help a lot, but it is mainly 3 and 7 to blame.

Pheel:

Or Option 7, Creators haven't promoted their games. All of the other possible reasons you have absolutely no impact over.

To be fair, a lot of creators ARE promoting their games; I see it. They just don't know how to do it effectively, which makes sense, due to lack of industry/marketing experience. I put out that big list of contacts, for instance, but I aksed a few of my media contacts recently if they have been contacted by many XNA creators, and they said "no." Like 75 games were released since I printed that list...

Besides the stuff 'we have no control over' like dashboard presence, etc., that are a big deal, I have another piece.

Option 8: Regardless of quality, a lack of unique titles that draw people in. As I said before, do things that get people's attention aesthetically or content wise, even if your game itself isn't of the highest quality. A good example of this is the platformer about Reagan and jellybeans which got media/gamer attention it wouldn't have gotten were it more generic.

Jim Perry:

Captain Comic:

My list was compiled from the assumption that a lot of people know about the Indie games channel, but just choose not to browse it.

Is that a safe assumption though? How do you know/determine this?

I don't know it for sure, but I would have thought that if a lot of people where coming to check out the games, that the games would be getting more trials. 50,000 trials for the most popular Indie games just seemed a little low to me. I know there are about 30 million Xbox users out there. How many of those Xbox units are connected to the Internet? 50,000 is 0.17 % of 30 million.

Effective marketting is hard... lots of work, very time consuming, and can be really costly. I think people are starting to realize this (and also realizing that Microsoft isn't going to do it for you). Part of the problem though is that you have to get to the people and the casual gamers aren't reading many (any?) gaming websites, which seems to be largely where our marketting efforts have been concentrated. Unfortunately to get most anywhere else costs money which most of us don't have to spend.

I've been able to promote my game to around a dozen game sites (both my free PC version and Xbox Version) but still get relatively low trials. I know my game is not the cream of the crop nor is it the bottom crap, but I've only gotten ~1500 trials in the last 2 weeks :( I'm also guessing I'm butchering my own trials on the xbox because I released the same game on the PC for free. But I have no concrete evidence linking those two.

It seems like getting some buzz on more mainstream media is the way to go to get more trial downloads. The Xbox Indie Games specific channels are not pulling in enough people imo.

Just my 3 cents

arrogancy:

Pheel:

Or Option 7, Creators haven't promoted their games. All of the other possible reasons you have absolutely no impact over.

To be fair, a lot of creators ARE promoting their games; I see it. They just don't know how to do it effectively, which makes sense, due to lack of industry/marketing experience. I put out that big list of contacts, for instance, but I aksed a few of my media contacts recently if they have been contacted by many XNA creators, and they said "no." Like 75 games were released since I printed that list...

Besides the stuff 'we have no control over' like dashboard presence, etc., that are a big deal, I have another piece.

Option 8: Regardless of quality, a lack of unique titles that draw people in. As I said before, do things that get people's attention aesthetically or content wise, even if your game itself isn't of the highest quality. A good example of this is the platformer about Reagan and jellybeans which got media/gamer attention it wouldn't have gotten were it more generic.

What are the nature of those contacts? And can you point me to that post? I must have missed it.

A lot of great things has happened to Indie games lately, like more countries, more exposure, the new name, the new price ranges.
But it still seems to me like there's one big issue even if you promote your game.

We did some research on the subject among casual gamers. What we found out was that casual gamers have a hard enough time just navigating the NXE. When they get to the marketplace they stop on "All games" believing that it should include all games.
If the games aren't included in "All games" there really should be some sort of note that it isn't really all games.

9. The primary marketplace category "All games" does not include Indie Games.

mechaghost:

but I've only gotten ~1500 trials in the last 2 weeks :(

1500....I'd love 1500

I've gotten 75 downloads in the last 2 weeks.  I have about a 14% sell through rate but all but nobody is trying my game.

Polychrome:

Most customers have no idea that Xbox Indie Games exist.

I didn't even know how to get to it until a month ago. None of my friends have been to it before.

If you want a productive discussion on a topic like trial effectiveness, you should at least be basing your discussions off numbers and examples instead of just starting off an assumed truth, like 'indie games get relatively few trial downloads'. This one in particular is kind of ridiculous:

Relatively few trial downloads compared to what? Commercial XBLA titles? PC titles? iPhone App Store titles? PSN titles? Non-games (apps) on the XBLIG store? Other indie titles?

You can't have 'relatively few' without something for the value to be relative to. Since you haven't provided that or any numbers, it's hard for anyone responding to a thread like this to contribute something valuable, since it's inherently speculation. (Of course, if a poster decides to contribute data of their own, then a good discussion can get going.)

Call me a hypocrite (I don't have any trial data to share since I haven't put any games up for sale yet), but I think you're looking at the issue the wrong way.

Number of downloads is not a particularly useful metric. Some more useful metrics to consider:
Conversion rate from dashboard view to trial download (pretty sure this isn't available on XBLIG, but in other distribution channels, you can track views alongside downloads)
Conversion rate from trial download to purchase
Average playtime/engagement per trial gamer (again, unfortunately not possible on XBLIG due to the networking restriction; but hugely useful in other channels)

If you find that you don't have the data you need to make informed decisions and have a good discussion, go find ways to get that data. For example, if you're having trouble getting data out of the XBLIG marketplace, you could try conducting tests with a PC version of your game - the data you gather won't necessarily be equivalent to the data you would gather from XBLIG, but you can at least use that data to begin drawing conclusions about your game.

For example, you could advertise your game on Google AdWords for a few dollars a day, trying out different promotional descriptions and keywords, to gather data on what keywords and descriptions are most effective at getting someone to click a link and download your trial. The data you'd gather there would be of use in attempting to pick the best description and promotional materials for your game when submitting it to XBLIG.

Direct focus testing, either through a beta or simply putting your trial up for download on the internet and monitoring feedback via forums/blogs, is also a good source of information - though you probably can't call it 'data' since it's going to be subjective and biased by self-selection, you can at least take the anecdotes and general feedback from those testers and allow it to influence your decisions.

Kevin Gadd:

If you want a productive discussion on a topic like trial effectiveness, you should at least be basing your discussions off numbers and examples instead of just starting off an assumed truth, like 'indie games get relatively few trial downloads'. This one in particular is kind of ridiculous:

Relatively few trial downloads compared to what? Commercial XBLA titles? PC titles? iPhone App Store titles? PSN titles? Non-games (apps) on the XBLIG store? Other indie titles?

You can't have 'relatively few' without something for the value to be relative to. Since you haven't provided that or any numbers, it's hard for anyone responding to a thread like this to contribute something valuable, since it's inherently speculation.

I don't know how many Xbox live users are out there, but there are supposedly 30M Xbox units. A good number of downloads for a very popular game (going from posts on this site) is about 50,000. Some people have quoted less than 5,000 over several months.

50,000 is 0.17% of 30M. The 0.17% for a popular title just seemed a little low to me. If games like Braid and Castle Crashers can sell 250,000 to 500,000 copies (who know many downloads that is - most likely in the millions), I would have thought that our games could do better than 5000 downloads.

You can't sell a game unless someone tries it, and I was really fishing for ideas of what Microsoft could do or what we could do as a community to raise awareness for all games.

If more of the XBLIG games were as well done as Castle Crashers maybe they'd get more downloads.

Jim Perry:

If more of the XBLIG games were as well done as Castle Crashers maybe they'd get more downloads.

XXIst Century Boy:

Few developers want to invest the time for this...

Then they shouldn't complain about lack of downloads.

Jim Perry:

If more of the XBLIG games were as well done as Castle Crashers maybe they'd get more downloads.

Yes, they'd get more downloads, but still not nearly as many. If Castle Crashers came out on Indie games, I'll bet it wouldn't have sold 1/10th as well. I can't prove it of course - just a feeling.

I was just hoping to get a more creative conversation going (something beyond "write a Halo 4 and sell it for $1" or "advertise your game during the Super Bowl").

Ah well, hopefully the ratings system will help the top rated games.

Captain Comic:

I was just hoping to get a more creative conversation going

Such as?

You can't really get creative with business aspects. If you have a great game and market it properly you should see an above average number of downloads. The problem is probably 99% of the games on XBLIG don't fit into either, let alone above.

Captain Comic:

I don't know how many Xbox live users are out there, but there are supposedly 30M Xbox units. A good number of downloads for a very popular game (going from posts on this site) is about 50,000. Some people have quoted less than 5,000 over several months.

50,000 is 0.17% of 30M. The 0.17% for a popular title just seemed a little low to me. If games like Braid and Castle Crashers can sell 250,000 to 500,000 copies (who know many downloads that is - most likely in the millions), I would have thought that our games could do better than 5000 downloads.

You can't sell a game unless someone tries it, and I was really fishing for ideas of what Microsoft could do or what we could do as a community to raise awareness for all games.

Think of it in terms of conversion rate. If all 30 million xbox owners looked at your game on marketplace, and 50000 bought it, you have a 0.17% conversion rate. Sounds awful, right? Not really.
In some forms of online advertisements, average conversion rates are often below 1%. Despite this, companies will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars running an ad campaign, even if it's getting a very small conversion rate, because that rate is based on the number of impressions, or number of people who looked at the advertisement. If you can put an advertisement in front of 500000 people and get a conversion rate of 1% and it only costs you 50 dollars, that's a tremendously good deal compared to, say, 5000 impressions with a 10% conversion rate for $500.

So, with this in mind, the questions you should be asking are:
How many impressions is my game getting? (How many people see it on the XBLIG marketplace, or on the web, etc.)
How many of those impressions am I converting into a trial download?
How many of those trial downloads am I converting into sales?

Those three questions are much easier to answer individually than 'why aren't we doing better than 5000 downloads':
You can get an idea of your impression counts based on various types of data. You should be using google analytics (or equivalent) on your game's website, and tracking any inbound hits you're getting from sites like xboxindies to get an idea of how much promotional buzz your game is getting, and you should be paying attention to the number of people who are giving your game user ratings.
You already get trial download counts, which means you don't have to do much work here at all. Awesome!
You already get sales data too, which also answers that question.

So, given partial data for the first question, and pretty accurate data for the second and third, you not only have a pretty good picture of the situation, but you have the ability to turn knobs and see how things change. Again, admittedly you can't experiment in realtime on the dashboard, but that shouldn't stop you from experimenting. Play with different techniques for advertising your game, different promotional text, etc. and see how it affects your conversion rates. If you find changes that produce tremendously good results in your experiments, you then have the confidence necessary to try out those changes on the XBLIG marketplace, and see the real results as soon as you get updated sales data.

It pays to keep in mind that unless you go out of your way to advertise your game, the only 'advertising' you're getting is essentially showing up in the XBLIG game listings. You shouldn't expect a good conversion rate out of that; personally I would be thankful to get any trial downloads if I didn't do any advertising of my own.

Braid and Castle Crashers were both heavily advertised over long periods of time by people who understood that it was important to get people looking at their games. If you care about trial downloads and sales numbers, you should be caring about impressions too.

Jim Perry:

If more of the XBLIG games were as well done as Castle Crashers maybe they'd get more downloads.

This is another reason that the comparison between Indie games and games like Castle Crashers and Braid need to stop. Both Castle Crashers and Braid cost 15 dollars (1200 MS Points), which is three times the limit for Indie game creators. For the sake of argument, I'll go with the statement that Braid and Castle Crashers were heavily marketed (I remember strong PR campaigns for both, but don't remember seeing any ads). For a one dollar game, it seems to me impossible to make any money from advertising your game. Let's assume you have to pay 20 cents per ad click: if you have an impossibly high conversion rate from your ad of 67%, you'll break even on sales of your game (remittance rate and Microsoft's cut taken into consideration).

Funkmasonry Industries:

Jim Perry:

If more of the XBLIG games were as well done as Castle Crashers maybe they'd get more downloads.

Honestly, I doubt we'll ever see a game the same level of quality as Castle Crashers on XBLIG. Castle Crashers costs 1200 MS Points, three times the new maximum price for Indie games. There is very little incentive for professional developers to create high-budget or high production values games for XBLIG simply because of the prices available to creators.

You can have the quality and polish of Castle Crashers without needing $15 to recoop the cost. They had tons of unlockable weapons, the animals, online multiplayer, three total game modes, and a fairly extensive campaign. But at it's core, it has a fun mechanic, some co-op, nice art, and is highly polished. You could do that, but in a smaller scope, and make it a $5 game.