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Forums - Microsoft - XBLA is a "slaughterhouse" for smaller developers

Indepe-what? Sorry, let me put down the controller, I was busy replaying Dragon Age: Origins for the 4th time just after I replayed Mass Effect for the 6th time.

I would have the time to play Braid, Castle Crashers, or Shadow Complex, but I am really itching to perfect Guile's Ultra Combo, which is the weirdest mish mash of zigs and zags.



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Signalstar said:
mrstickball said:
themanwithnoname said:
 

XBLA has more exclusives because there is a lot more money to go around to devs. During the initial wave of Xbox Live Arcade, prior to PSN releasing....People saw that XBLA was a gold mine, and focused their resources on it, not knowing the terms of the agreements (usually Microsoft tries to get developers into a 1-year exclusivity deal), or knowing how PSN would pan out.

XBLA still has the edge because it simply makes more money than PSN by a wide margin. Thats not to say that PSN can't be successful, because it can, but if you had to choose a platform....Would you choose the one that is twice the size of the other, or go with the smaller one just because?

PSN development strategy can be very smart if a developer knows what he's doing. PSN terms are a little looser than XBLA, so it is advantageous for some developers to go there first, although its more risky, as there is less money there, and dev costs are still similar to XBLA.

Oh, and finally...Microsoft cares about Arcade more than PSN. That is an opinion, but we see Microsoft doing a whole heck of a lot more in terms of getting news out there about whats going on, as opposed to http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=112957&page=1PSN. Microsoft has cut the price of 45 games on XBLA in the past two months...How many did PSN have in the same time frame? 2? 3? Is sony building a new format for PSN like Microsoft is? Is Sony snagging all of those classic Sega games like MS has? Microsoft has built some great in-roads which has allowed them to stay atop the digital distribution wars, despite Nintendo being a lot bigger, and Sony being the vet.

Ownage! Sweet Glorious Ownage. Here is a list of every game or addon that has had a price drop on PSN in the past 2 months.

 

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Hamsterball – Sale (now $4.99, original price $9.99)
Death Track: Resurrection – Sale (now $7.99, original price $14.99)
Worms – Sale (now $7.99, original price $12.99)
Hamster Ball Unleashed – Sale (now $4.99, original price $9.99)
Super Stacker – Permanent Price Change (now $6.99, original price $9.99)
Trine – Permanent Price Change (now $9.99, original price $14.99)
Blue Toad Murder Files: Episode 1 – Sale (now $1.49, original price $7.49)
Kick-Ass – Sale (now $9.99, original price $14.99)

Tank Battles Permanent Price Drop (now $4.99, original price $6.99)
Hot Brain Permanent Price Drop (now $9.99, original price $14.99)
Justice League Heroes Permanent Price Drop (now $9.99, original price $14.99)
Aero Racer Permanent Price Drop (now $2.99, original price $4.99)
The Red Star – Sale (now $7.99, original price $14.99)

Stand O’ Food Permanent Price Drop (now $2.99, original price $4.99)
Sam And Max – The Devil’s Playhouse – Full Season Service Entitlement – Sale (now $24.99, original price $34.99)
Greed Corp. – Sale (now $5.99, original price $9.99)
Soldner-X: Himmelssturmer Permanent Price Drop (now $7.99, original price $9.99)
Mahjongg Artifacts: Chapter 2 – Minis – Sale (now $1.99, original price $4.99)
Stand O’ Food – Minis – Sale (now $1.99, original price $4.99)
Obscure: The Aftermath – Sale (now $14.99, original price $29.99)

Heracles Chariot Racing Permanent Price Drop (now $2.99, original price $4.99)
Wakeboarding HD Sale (now $7.49, original price $14.99)
Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battle Cars: Battleball Arena Sale (now $4.99, original price $9.99)

Joust Permanent Price Drop (now $1.99, original price $4.99)
Championship Sprint Permanent Price Drop (now $1.99, original price $4.99)
Dynogems Sale (now $1.99, original price $2.99) *Offer good through Monday, 6/7

Thanks for the answer.

~24 PSN games to 45 XBLA games is the answer. That is a huge gap, don't you think? No wonder devs would go with XBLA, as they are far more aggressive (at least in the past 2 months) for price cuts.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

Price cuts are not always a good thing for a developer for example a game that costs 10 bucks and the developer was seeing 7 dollars profit and selling 10k a month was making 70,000 a month. Now if that game is dropped to 5 dollars and the developers make 3.50 then they need to sell 20k units to make the same amount. My point being that maybe it is a bad sign that so many games on XBL are having their prices cut. 



cmeese47 said:

Price cuts are not always a good thing for a developer for example a game that costs 10 bucks and the developer was seeing 7 dollars profit and selling 10k a month was making 70,000 a month. Now if that game is dropped to 5 dollars and the developers make 3.50 then they need to sell 20k units to make the same amount. My point being that maybe it is a bad sign that so many games on XBL are having their prices cut. 

Except for the fact that when an XBL title has a price cut, the price drops 50%, but the number of units sold increases 200-300%. It more than makes up for the reduction in gross revenues.



Back from the dead, I'm afraid.

ive bought a number of games/dlc on sale or reduced in price that i wouldnt have bought otherwise.  so they got money from me that they would never have gotten.



"I like my steaks how i like my women.  Bloody and all over my face"

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Competition scared them. No competition on PSN. Also maybe they are worried about saturating the Motorcycle Stunt genre...



And that's the only thing I need is *this*. I don't need this or this. Just this PS4... And this gaming PC. - The PS4 and the Gaming PC and that's all I need... And this Xbox 360. - The PS4, the Gaming PC, and the Xbox 360, and that's all I need... And these PS3's. - The PS4, and these PS3's, and the Gaming PC, and the Xbox 360... And this Nintendo DS. - The PS4, this Xbox 360, and the Gaming PC, and the PS3's, and that's all *I* need. And that's *all* I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one... I need this. - The Gaming PC and PS4, and Xbox 360, and thePS3's . Well what are you looking at? What do you think I'm some kind of a jerk or something! - And this. That's all I need.

Obligatory dick measuring Gaming Laptop Specs: Sager NP8270-GTX: 17.3" FULL HD (1920X1080) LED Matte LC, nVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M, Intel Core i7-4700MQ, 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3, 750GB SATA II 3GB/s 7,200 RPM Hard Drive

I am personally glad they are on the Playstation I wish more followed then everyone could use the 50 dollars they save on live to buy awesome games. Oh well I will just enjoy the good games I get and hope we get more braid defectors after the MS exclusivity runs out.

I guess maybe that speaks to the awesome games on XBLA



cmeese47 said:

I am personally glad they are on the Playstation I wish more followed then everyone could use the 50 dollars they save on live to buy awesome games. Oh well I will just enjoy the good games I get and hope we get more braid defectors after the MS exclusivity runs out.

I guess maybe that speaks to the awesome games on XBLA


You don't need to be an XBL Gold member to buy these games.  The free Silver accounts are sufficient meaning you still can save that money to buy more games...



So this translates as my games isn't good enough to attract buyers given the competition on XBLA, I'll try to mug some other crowd instead? 

Seems more likely some shovelware dev trying to get attention for their game by using "console wars" to advertise it.  I wouldn't buy their game on principal of how low this PR stunt is.



With 87 at metacritic I think 50 000 is not a big number.