2DBoy.com recently polled ~200 XBLA developers in an article titled "Are Developers Leaving Xbox Live Arcade?", asking them various questions about their experiences on XBLA and other platforms, and discussing their future plans for supporting XBLA, PSN, Steam, WiiWare, and other services. It's a rather in-depth article, and here are a few of the highlights:
| In August of 2010, as part of my research for a talk I was preparing, I sent out a kind of “indie census” to about 200 independent developers. One of the questions I asked was which platforms they were developing for at the time (2010), and which platforms they had developed for in the previous two years (2008-2009). For this article, I sent out another survey to the same group, asking again which platforms they are currently (2011) developing for and which platforms they intend to develop for in 2012. It’s important to note that only about half of the developers I sent the survey to responded, so while the results do have meaning and suggest certain trends, they are not definitive. I’m open (and wouldn’t be shocked) to seeing data that suggests a different trend.
First, let’s take a look at the number of these developers making games for PS3 vs the 360 over the last few years:
As you can see, in 2008-2009 Microsoft had more developers making games for XBLA than Sony had for PSN. The gap narrowed in 2010, and this year more of these developers are making PSN games than XBLA games. Next year, the number of games this group makes for XBLA will drop again, and PSN’s lead will widen as the number of developers making PSN games rise to double what it was in 2008-2009. Should Microsoft care about this relatively small group of developers? I think so. It includes the developers of many high profile, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful games. To better understand what kind of games this group of developers represent, I took the list of XBLA games from Wikipedia and looked up each game’s Metascore. I then split the games into two categories: games made by the group of developers I sent the survey to, and all the rest. Of the 400 or so XBLA games listed on Wikipedia, 33 were made by this group of developers. Here are some interesting facts:
It becomes apparent that this group of developers makes much higher quality games than the average XBLA game, and represents a significant part of XBLA’s star talent. It’s unlikely, therefore, that the decline in the number of XBLA developers among this group is due to Microsoft turning them down because of a rising quality bar. It’s much more likely that they simply choose, for whatever reason, to no longer develop games for XBLA. |
Both XBLA and PSN aren't doing that well in comparison to other digital distribution platforms:
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This survey data makes it clear that both 360 and PS3 are, at the moment, second tier platforms in terms of popularity among these developers. Windows, Mac, and iOS are getting far more attention, a very positive indicator for their longer term health. The chart below shows what percentage of developers have been making games for each platform over the last few years. It also includes reported plans for 2012:
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The developers polled largely agreed that the ease of working with the platform holder is the most influential factor in determining platforms for their projects:
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I asked these developers to rate the importance of certain factors in choosing which platforms they will develop games for. The most influential factor was ease of working with the platform owner, with 69% of developers rating it Very Important. In 2nd and 3rd place were the platform’s install base (63%) and how well the platform’s controls match the game (58%). Since ease of working with the platform owner was voted the most important factor in choosing a platform, I sent out a followup survey to ask how easy each platform owner has been to work with. Here are the results:
Almost half of those who worked with Microsoft described the experience as “excruciating”. Given that ease of working with the platform owner was voted the most important factor in choice of platforms, it becomes perfectly clear why XBLA, despite being a very strong channel with a large audience and huge earning potential, is dropping in popularity among these developers. |
The article goes on to discuss ways in which Microsoft can improve XBLA to prevent this from continuing. All in all it's a very informative read.
