Without getting too far ahead of myself, what's everyone's idea for distributing their games?  Right now I'm just doing this as a hobby, but I'm a businessman at heart, and I've done enough business to know that you don't get far in life without a good plan and model to work with.  With that said, what is your ideal method to distribute your games and for making money for that kick ass game you're developing?

Submitting them to a publishing company?

Sell them on a website for download or for a CD?

Just distribute them for free and ask for donations?

In-game advertising? (as mentioned before here)

or other ideas?

 

Distributing it yourself is difficult. I have seen people who manage to make a little bit of money distributing the games themselves through a website. Another method, on the PC at least, might be to contact Valve and see if you can get the game distributed through Steam. There are other services as well like Gametap who might be willing to pick the game up. I'm not sure how you'd get paid though, because it is a subscription service. They likely give you a licensing fee of some sort.

The best method of distribution for smaller, indie and casual games is through digital distribution services or online publishers such as Manifesto Games. Personally, I see self-distribution as the hard way of doing things, especially if you make a popular game. Remember that bandwidth isn't free, so if you're self-distributing a popular game, you need to ensure that the 1% of players who actually buy the game can provide the money needed to keep your site up and running. When you use a service like Manifesto, that's generally included in their cut, so you don't have to pay for it.

On the idea of using Steam as a distribution platform, there are a few caveats, such as a lack of .NET integration (AFAIK) which may make it unsuitable. I wouldn't be surprised if sooner or later someone creates a similar service for XNA games, however.

 

cronholio:

Distributing it yourself is difficult. I have seen people who manage to make a little bit of money distributing the games themselves through a website.

 

That's how I roll.  I think I basically cover the cost of gas from my games. 

If you don't mind me asking, what distributor/publisher do you use?  has anyone had any experience with Manifesto? I know from reading Greg's blog that they require some DRM, is their DRM scheme compatible with XNA/.NET apps.
 

Howdy,

Fiend of Void:

On the idea of using Steam as a distribution platform, there are a few caveats, such as a lack of .NET integration (AFAIK) which may make it unsuitable. I wouldn't be surprised if sooner or later someone creates a similar service for XNA games, however.

 

Not to highjack this thread but why can’t we, the members of the XNA community, sit down and set something like that up. MS has said repeatedly that they want to develop the ‘youtube’ of games but I don’t see that coming in the near future. Setting up a system like Steam where we package and submit our games to would be in my mind the simplest way to start promoting this ‘youtube’ idea. We could even link the system to payment for people that wanted to make some money off their games.

The system need not be limited to games. We could use the same basic system for gathering common resources, code, components, tutorials, and blogs.

I like one stop shopping...

Take Care,
Near

 

Ture Reflection:

Howdy,

Not to highjack this thread but why can’t we, the members of the XNA community, sit down and set something like that up. MS has said repeatedly that they want to develop the ‘youtube’ of games but I don’t see that coming in the near future.

Derek's GameProjects can probably morph into something like that.  When the update come in April, downloading and install/execute will be a bit easier. I think it will be awsome.  Maybe even integrate XFire or something with it.  It will take a heck of bandwidth though. ;)  Might run into the same sort of censorship issues as YouTube.

Excuse me for being a total noob, but I was under the impression that creators club was going to include the ability to upload and sell games to XBLA. I thought that was the point to XNA. Mind you this is from an article I read in Game Informer a few months ago. It is why I downloaded all the stuff for it, and started the long process of learning how to program, and finally picked a college to attend starting in the fall.

 Anyone know if or why that is no longer the case?

 Failing that, the youtube of XNA would kick ass. Especially if you could distribute the games in a format that would be playable on the console. We could use a P2P type network and magnet links, like bit torrent, and share the bandwidth across the community. Then it would just be a matter of individuals starting their own webpages on their own space to convince people to pay for their wares, linked from one common site (ie. indyXNAgames4u.net) and we would need one webmaster to update that mainpage. I do not know what would be needed to apply DRM so that people can get paid, but the webmaster for the mainpage could sell advertising to all the indies out there. It would require minimal investment on the community's part, and zero support from Microsoft. I am sure after about a million downloads Microsoft would jump on board.

Matthew Power:

Excuse me for being a total noob, but I was under the impression that creators club was going to include the ability to upload and sell games to XBLA. I thought that was the point to XNA. Mind you this is from an article I read in Game Informer a few months ago. It is why I downloaded all the stuff for it, and started the long process of learning how to program, and finally picked a college to attend starting in the fall.

Game Informer said that? I would think that they aren't so well informed then. XNACC (well XNACC paid) allows you to put your games on a Xbox360 and play them there, but nothing about XBLA was ever said, to the best of my knowledge. XBLA has a process for games regardless of what they're made with, that isn't simply going to be short-cutted because someone made a game with C#.

Even Torpex Games had to go through it for Schizoid, and they have super-developer Jamie Fristom amongst them.
 

I am more inclined to believe that I am ill informed. What you are saying makes perfect sense. So, paid membership allows you to play on your console. Awesome. Now its time to figure out C#.

With the April XNA refresh around the corner there is rumors that binary distribution for 360 games will be part of the roll out. Which to me implies that it will become much easier to distribute games to your players. However remember that for anyone to play your game binary or otherwise they also have to have a CreatorsClub membership in good standing to even be able to load the game to their hardware.  We're getting close though. Just be patient and good things will come..

If you are looking to market a XNA windows based game there are a few choices to look into for distribution:

Microsoft
http://www.microsoftcasualgames.msn.com

Valve Software
http://www.valvesoftware.com/business.html

GarageGames
http://garagegames.com/solutions/publishing

RealArcade
http://gamedevs.realarcade.com/GameSubmission/index.jsp?src=rapg


Hope this helps expand upon the distributions mentioned already.