XNA Creators Club Online: Welcome to Xbox LIVE Indie Games!
Welcome to Xbox LIVE Indie Games! In addition to our name change reflected all around the site, we have several more exciting new features and additions to XNA Creators Club Online to share with you. There’s a lot of new information; please take a moment to become familiar with the new changes to ensure you’re an informed Creator!
New Countries
We have two new additions to our family of Creators – welcome Japan and Germany! Additionally, we have an update for Singapore and Sweden…
- Japanese and German Creators can now submit Indie Games (as of July 23, 2009)
- Japanese-specific forums are now available here on CCO!
- Localized versions of XNA Creators Club Online in Japanese and German.
- Creators can now submit their Indie Games into Japanese, German, Singapore and Swedish Xbox LIVE Marketplaces!
- Note: In Japan the Xbox LIVE Indie Games Marketplace will be available to consumers on August 11, 2009.
Reputation
Ever wonder who’s a seasoned Creator and who’s just dropping by? With our new Reputation system, Creators receive points and levels based on their activity on XNA Creators Club Online. Your profile and reputation may reflect items such as MVP or XNA Team badges, reputation score, and more. Learn more about how you earned and how to keep your Reputation high in this article.
Tokens
Help media outlets help you - Premium Creators now have the ability to give out tokens for their games! Each game title will receive a maximum of 50 tokens, and you decide how to distribute them. Tokens are a great way for media outlets to easily review and potentially increase awareness of your game, and will be available to all creators beginning July 30th on the My Business page.
Servicing Your Game
Today, when a Creator has an update to their game, they notify users via the Xbox.com forums…not anymore! As of August 11, 2009, if Creators have an approved update to their game, customers who’ve already purchased the game will automatically be asked if they want to download the most updated version of that game.
- Submitting XNA Game Studio 3.1 games: Starting today, Creators can submit games updated or created in XNA Game Studio 3.1! Be aware that even after passing Playtest and Peer Review your 3.1 games will not appear on Xbox LIVE Marketplace until the new Xbox LIVE Dashboard launches on August 11, 2009. We will also continue to accept XNA Game Studio 3.0 versions of games until October 22, 2009. After October 22, 2009 if you want to submit or service your Indie Game, you will need to provide XNA Game Studio 3.1 .ccgame files.
Price Changes
Indie Games will have three price points to choose from, to keep them more in-line with other products available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. Games can be sold at 80, 240, or 400 Microsoft Points. Only games 50 MB and under can be priced at 80 Microsoft Points. How does this affect currently priced games?
- Games currently at 400 Points: Will retain current price point, but have the option to change to one of the new price points during an update or price change event.
- Games currently at 800 Points: Can remain at 800 points for the life of the game unless an update needs to be submitted, at which time one of the new price points will need to be chosen. The option to price your game at 800 Microsoft Points will remain until October 22, 2009.
- Games currently at 200 Points: Will remain at 200 points until October 22, 2009. At that point, XNA will automatically change these games to 80 Microsoft Points. For price changes, game updates, and new games the 200 price point is no longer available.
- Only Games less than 50MB are eligible to be sold at 80 points.
- Between now and October 22, 2009 a game can be updated as often as the user wants just like they can today (excluding the seven day submission jail)
- As ever, price changes to a game can only be made every 90 days.
Name Change
We began the change from Xbox LIVE Community Games to Xbox LIVE Indie Games with the launch of XNA Game Studio 3.1. Our roll out of this change continues today, in the following places:
- XNA Creators Club Online
- Xbox LIVE Community Games channel now is called Xbox LIVE Indie Games
- Xbox LIVE Indie Games box art both in dash on and Xbox.com Marketplace
The name change to Xbox LIVE Indie Games will be reflected on Xbox.com, the remainder of the console and in the Xbox LIVE Marketplace later this summer!
We hope you enjoy the improvements we’ve made around XNA Creators Club Online and we’re excited to see what you create! As ever, if you have questions – you should visit our forums or email us at creators@microsoft.com.
We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that they [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine and half years? It's a learning process. - SCEI president Kaz Hirai
It's a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they're like, "Oh my God that's so cool, I'm gonna go buy it." So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they've showed it to someone else who then go out and buy it and so on. Everyone I know bought one and nobody turns it on. - Epic Games president Mike Capps
We have a real culture of thrift. The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games. - Activision CEO Bobby Kotick
