Disclaimer: Granted I will say that yes I am biased and the below examples apply to my console of choice. You may view this as furthering my personal agenda. But that said, the very same dilema can occur to your console and I truly mean well, so hear me out.

We typically seperate games made for digital distribution and games made specifically for retail. Games like Geometry Wars or Fat Princess, naturally couldn't be on the same pedestal as high budget retail games like Halo or Uncharted. That is how the system worked/works and we generally are fine with this. Granted this has no impact on the games individual quality but I digress.

X1 has a dilema in that it has 2 games, one all ready out, made specifically for digital, yet do not have indie budgets. These are games that can easily be considered on the same level as exclusive retail offerings if they were made so in reality. I am talking about Killer Instinct and Project Spark, both free-to-play digital titles.

I am aware that gamers are slow to change, both in action but especially in perception IMO. I mean we typically view free-to-play with much negativity due to the concept being so foreign to us console gamers. But I honestly can't put Killer Instinct on the same level as Halo: Spartan Assault or Max: Curse of the Brotherhood. I especailly won't compare Project Spark to indie titles. All though both are digital based in their distribution and have no retail channel to be sold, they are clearly bigger budget and more ambitious.

Killer Instinct is supposed to be active during the entire life cycle of the X1 and become slowly updated with time, improving and changing as the X1 ages with it. This isn't a release-and-forget-in-two months indie release. This is the dedicated exclusive fighter for Xbox One. Project Spark has a ton of potential and is garnering a fair amount of buzz. Many naturally compare it to Little Big Planet because.....you know, rivals. But I fear that many people will simply dismiss Project Spark because of its method of distribution and being free-to-play. If it gets a high 80's or even 90+ meta, just because its sales can't be tracked and its revenue stream is unorthodox to our traditions, will it be discarded by opposing fans?

This is going to happen more and more this gen, where we will have "exceptions" to the digital rule. Again, I personally can not group these 2 games or any ambitious digital title to any indie game just because they aren't available at a physical store. What do you think?

I think that we're going to need to move past the mental segregation of games with a retail release and games with a digital only release. Digital is going to be a large part of the future. Expect to see it pushed because the margins are much better.

We've already seen a lot of flow in that direction. Journey was a big hit when it was digital only. PC gamers are already thoroughly used to digital as a primary means of purchasing. The last PC game I bought new from retail was Mass Effect 2.

What I hope this means is the return of a more robust "middle". Small developers who are successful will have the capital for better and better games and they won't have to deal with retail distribution, which requires a big publisher and/or a lot of money. That means a bigger slice of the pie for the developer and more room for growth. Some people bad mouth small developers a lot but I see a ton of potential, as I believe the cream of the crop will rise to fill the void in that middle tier of games.

The question on project spark is how are we supposed to measure its success?
I don't know how many threads I've read about how Spark is the greatest thing to happen to gaming... I'm not going to be one to throw out project spark simply because we likely will never know the exact sales, but there should be some measure of understanding that it shouldn't be brought up unless we see proof of its success.

I understand your point, high budget digital only games, right?

I think a game that fits your pattern is WipeOut HD, this game was certainly not low budget or indie. Yet (at first) it released digitally only and for only £15, Fury expansion added to this digital package only. The game holds more content than many full priced retail releases at the fraction of the cost. So it's not F2P but that doesn't mean it didn;t have a high budget.

There is still a stigma on digital titles only though, the competition in the market can mean prices are still not low enough while in retail competition lowers games costs contantly. In the case of the 2 F2P games in question, it's a matter of whether their content is worth playing at all, let alone paying for. Tekken Revolution is best to compare to KI, it would have had the budget and backing of the Tekken development team and for what I know of it, it is succeeding. KI could easily follow.

The digital separation though will never close for home consoles until official stores get their pricing in line with retail shops.

Surely they'll announce numbers when it hits certain Milestones.. Like we would have really bought Minecraft if we didnt knew it was such a succes.. The sound of sale will lead to curiosity of why it sold so much > even more sales

It's free to play.

On top of which, it's also available on pc.

So is Minecraft, didn't stop the 360 version being a massive success. But there are PR ways to announce success of f2p

With Project Spark, which is more game creater than game, they'll probably go the LBP route and say stuff like, "over 5 Million levels shared by members of the community, played over 50 Million times by their peers," and so on.

You should really highlight which portion you're talking about, otherwise you're being misleading.

What I mean is that if it's free to play, and it's on pc, MS could easily say something like "Spark massive success; downloaded 5m times", and we'd have no idea what platform it was on, actual install number, or have any real basis to judge usage numbers off of.

Not to mention that aside from the similarity to minecraft, MC had a gigantic pc following way before it hit consoles.

see i'm already waay past you.

fat princess is a better game than either halo or uncharted.


i refuse to artificially inflate a games worth just because a developer charges more or packages it. i don't care if the developer spent $300 million or $30 thousand. A quality game is the end result not it's budget.