Took me a few days to do this, but with enough work, I think I've figured it
out.


Incase anyone knows, there is no such formal tracking service for XBLA sales.
We've never seen any rock-hard numbers from anyone inside Microsoft.
Nevertheless, we've known it has been, and is very lucrative for the companies that
have invested in it: so much so that it seems every week, a new project is
greenlighted (I believe there are well over 50 games scheduled for release within
the next 6 months, with the vast majority being new IPs rather than redux of
old games).

So exactly how lucrative is it, and what games sell well? Well, I'll get to
that in a moment before I explain my methodology.

"Major" Larry Hyrb "Nelson", as he's called releases weekly XBLA updates on
forthcoming titles, as well as sales charts in terms of most played/downloaded,
but like Chart Track, never gives numbers. When asked about it he always has
cited Mygamercard.net as a great barometer of sales.

So I got to thinking: exactly how accurate could it be to extrapolate figures
from there? Real close, appearently.

Consider this: 36% of Xbox 360 owners have downloaded a XBLA arcade game.
Having said this, Mygamercard net tracks roughly 11.5% of the Xbox 360 owners. 
For consideration, VGC tracks roughly 3-5% of retailers to get their data, so
you can refference just how accurate this possibly can be.

And if your wondering if this is just screwy ideas by me, remember, I
succuessfully tracked Forza Motorsports hitting the 1m sold/shipped mark within 2
weeks of actuality, with a near-100% tracking rate on the ratio of US/CAN sales
to European sales. It works, folks. Even with hard-copy games. XBLA games are
even easier to track, since MGC tracks probably close to 25% of total XBL
gamers, if not more.


Also, before I get to the top 10 (I have 96 games tracked, btw), one might
ask "how lucrative"? Consider:

#1. An Xbox Live Arcade game, even a new IP is incredibly cheap. I
interviewed a developer about exact costs, and I was able to get some figures.
Appearently a new IP, using a unique, in-house engine, costs *about* $300,000-$600,000
between building, certification, and such. Ports are most likely alot cheaper (such as missle command), and I am sure that some of the higher-end IPs are indeed more, such as Geometry Wars and Street Fighter.

#2. Profit margins are much, much higher on a typical basis than retail-side
games. A $59.99 game in the US might net a developer 60%, with less and less
later on due to price reductions, and lack of shipments (as well as losses for
products unsold). A typical developer makes 70 to 80% on their product on XBLA.

#3. Sales, like on VC, are perpetual. Microsoft has shown in a recent chart,
that a game, even after 16+ months on the market, still sells 3-5% of it's
total revenue each month. The first 2 months only garner 33% of the total sales,
and even old launch-type games still sell.

So the top:20

* Included in "Xbox Live Unplugged: Vol #1"

^ Small Arms and Bankshot Billiards 2 had a "sale" on their IPs for 1 day (Sept 2nd for SA, 24th for BB2) in which prices were reduced 400 MSP, and 300 MSP respectively. Lumnies! Live's price was reduced permanantly to 800 MSP on 10/17/2007. For price, I used the median ($12.50) for sales.

Also, if anyone wanted to request numbers for any given game, just let me know. I worked a whole day on getting the other 76 titles not counted. Remember, I sorted out the trial data for this, and only used valid cards with achievements (since that negates the trials), which gives a much better look.

How are you working out those revenues? Isn't the revenue you have for Texas Hold'Em double what it should be?

The best thing about this business model is the "ongoing revenue" - it rocks. Its much harder for retail products to follow, as the shelf space is finite - and products get cleared off the shelves after a while.

Woops. Texas Hold'Em is $10, not $5.

Nice work! Interesting to get some idea of how arcade games do.

Too bad these weren't included on the weekly sales charts...

Great info though... It shows that digital distribution is catching on well and that people are not as afraid of it as they used to be.

Also, this is the center for casual content on 360. It would be nice to get a weekly or monthly update of this and show all the new games that came out in the month... For example, this week is Switchball and Word Puzzle. I downloaded them both and love them... Especially Switchball.

Actually, we could do a weekly sales chart with these.

It wouldn't be too hard. I can ask Just-Ben to see if he can make a HTML Parser/Crawler.

It can be done.

Also, I think this should appear in the News section rather then just a single forum like this... It is more valuable then a forum that will disappear off the main page by the end of today probably.

Don't worry, it'll be once I decide to post the full 96-unit chart :)

Wow, MS is making money Hand over fist for these microtransactions. It'd be nice to be able to follow all microtransactions to see how well add-ons for games sell but oh well, this is very nice though, great job.

Yesterday I realized I have spend about $250 on XBLA games. And then I bought Switchball.  XBLA games may be my favorite thing about the 360.

But I'm disappointed to not see some of my favorite games on that list.