The article has no factual basis, and only speculates on the truth. Where are the quotes from these indie developers saying "oh man! Microsoft is screwing us over!". Instead the writer merely sticks to unsubstantiated opinion. He has no grasp on the XBLA market, gives no valid comparisons, or any good argument if your actually "in the know".
Want me to go piece by piece and tear it to shreds with actual data?
But instead of actually honoring that commitment to small-time developers, Xbox Live Arcade has divulged into a miniature version of the retail market—a service that caters to the large publishers and squishes out the small developers who haven't the manpower or financial backing to compete. Ever notice that the service's biggest hits are all coming from studios owned or represented by larger publishers? Prince of Persia (Ubisoft), Geometry Wars (Activision), TMNT Arcade (Konami/Digital Eclipse), Galaga Legions (Namco), and so on. What happened to the developer friendly service that was meant to expose all of those undiscovered Miyamoto's out there?
But instead of actually honoring that commitment to small-time developers, Xbox Live Arcade has divulged into a miniature version of the retail market—a service that caters to the large publishers and squishes out the small developers who haven't the manpower or financial backing to compete. Ever notice that the service's biggest hits are all coming from studios owned or represented by larger publishers? Prince of Persia (Ubisoft), Geometry Wars (Activision), TMNT Arcade (Konami/Digital Eclipse), Galaga Legions (Namco), and so on. What happened to the developer friendly service that was meant to expose all of those undiscovered Miyamoto's out there?
One of the questions he fails to ask, or think fo himself is "why are the retro titles doing better than the indie titles"? It's not as if Microsoft isn't allowing new, indie IP's onto the market. The reason behind these old retro & retroHD titles doing well is due to 2 reasons:
1) Name Brand Recognition
2) Marketing
And that's a very simple fact. When you have a totally new IP by a no name company, it's hard for it to do well - simply because these indie developers are rookies when it comes to having a real marketing team that knows how to push an IP to do well. I've lamented TIME and TIME again against many of the indie developers that fail to bother marketing their game(s). Many XBLA games go onto the service as virtual unknowns, and that's not the way to get notability of your IP out there. Indie developers need marketing - even if the game is good, and can garner a high conversion rate from users, users still must know the game is
a) Available.
b) Good.
And the developer can establish both things by building a strong community base, and get their name out there. Many indie developers do a good job of it, but many don't. Why was/is it that Marble Blast Ultra was one of the best new IP's to XBLA in 2006? Because GarageGames actually has a marketing team, which is unique for a smaller developer. But that's the issue with most other smaller devs: No marketing spend = no money. Even if a game is digitally distributed, people have to know about it.
Well, one of those budding geniuses just exposed himself with the release of Braid--a brilliant time bending puzzle platformer in the vein of Donkey Kong 94 but with a style and flair rivaled by few. If you haven't bought this masterpiece yet, shame on you! The whole thing was created by one man, namely Jonathan Blow, former author of the Inner Product column for Game Developer Magazine and host of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the annual Game Developer's Conference. Braid is the purist definition of an "indie game" and has fortunately gotten a lot of recognition due to positive word of mouth among gamers and press. Too bad that it doesn't look as though Jonathan will rake in the massive profits from the game that he deserves. Why, you ask? Probably because he has little room for negotiation with Microsoft Game Studios as his publisher and because Microsoft enjoys screwing over the little guy.
Wrong. This is a totally unsubstantiated claim at worst, and an ill-researched claim at best. As of yesterday Jonathan Blow has said that Braid has almost "broken even" when you count opportunity cost, and that outside of the opportunity cost, the game has been very profitable. This means that he has made a few hundred thousand dollars (or so) for his own pockets. Microsoft hasn't screwed him over. Again, the author never reads any of JB's comments about the Microsoft machine: There were, and are snags, but the fact is, that Braid would have only done this well on XBLA, and not PC or PSN.
Developers who are working on XBLA projects seem to be treated one of two ways. If you've got publisher backing, Microsoft will be more willing to negotiate such things as royalty rates, or even bend some of the countless certification hurdles such as was the case with Capcom (Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD) and Konami (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) when their games were too large for the (ridiculously small) XBLA file size limit. If you don't have publisher backing, and likewise represent yourself in the face of Microsoft, prepare to fork up a massive percentage of your profits with little to no leverage for a better deal. Publisher backed developers can probably expect to keep around 70% of their profits from a single project, but royalties from an independent game can possibly drop as low as 40% in the worst circumstances. If an independent developer can manage to keep their 70%, Microsoft has a back door approach to choke their bottom line. Microsoft can choose at their discretion to "market" (the extent of this marketing goes unsaid) any XBLA title and take an additional 30% cut of the profits for the duration of said marketing period. Most XBLA games sell the mass majority of their units during the first week of availability with a trickle down period of sales following thereafter. How convenient for Microsoft that most of these profit eating marketing periods occur during the first week of a game's availability. Some foreign XBLA developers (Europe especially, because the Euro is now much stronger than the dollar) don't even realize that they are getting screwed by Microsoft on the point-to-dollar exchange rate. Some developers are actually losing money because they aren't making back what they put into the project thanks to Microsoft's dubious tactics.
I agree that Microsoft has been willing to bend backward for bigger developers a little bit more, when it comes to file sizes, but the fact is...Microsoft had to, or else many games would not have been on the service. What do you want Microsoft to do? Hold the hand(s) of every developer and do everything they want? Indie developers have stated that Microsoft has been very helpful getting their game to market.
What the writer doesn't understand is why publishers get that higher cut, and are valuable: There are a ton of costs incurred with being self-published. Just because you have a game coded, doesn't mean your out of the woods. You have certification processes, ratings boards, and other major hurdles to go through. Any game can be self-published, if a developer wants to do it. However, it does cost money to self-publish...But what do you expect? Passing worldwide ratings boards isn't always easy and costs money. That's why Microsoft re-structured the whole XNA/Unpublished deal. Although the split of profits has gone down to around 30% of revenue for a MS-published title, the fact is, they do a lot more for the indie developer, and have outlined the change in what they offer pretty clearly. The writer of the article never bothered, however, to look it up.
Oh, and the quote
"You know things are bad when it costs many indie game developers less to produce a decent DS title for retail than to develop your standard Xbox Live Arcade game for digital download."
Was laughable. Why did Metanet publish N+ to XBLA before the PSP/DS version was made...And delayed for months? What about the fact that Puzzle Quest has sold better on XBLA than DS? I'd love to see what DS games, and their budgets, he's quoting?
Most XBLA games, cost wise, range from $150,000-$500,000 if not the vast majority of them....Maybe it's me, but I doubt that many DS games can be made, published, and distributed for under $500,000 and achieve any sort of quality milestones (good game, good sales, profitability). I'm not saying DS games aren't profitable, but I doubt that coding, and producing the carts for the games is as cheap as XBLA, WiiWare, or PSN.
I'll end with this to rebut his article:
What are the top games on XBLA for 2008?
N+
Rez HD
Castle Crashers
Geometry Wars
Braid
3 Titles are independant, and made by studios that have a total employee base of under 30 people. Braid was made by 2 people. N+ by 15, and Castle Crashers by 30. Rez and Geometry Wars were also made by studios that aren't affiliated with one of the uber-companies either. 2008 has brough a ton of great, proftable, new IPs to the marketplace, yet the ranter harps on old titles published last year - Why didn't he bother talking about N+, Poker Smash, Castle Crashers, or other unique IPs that launched this year? Oh wait, he wants to cherry pick to prove his point.
The article fails hard. Maybe he should read more VGC?
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