New XNA FAQs

You've gone to the other extreme..

I'm not saying MS should offer all XNA games for points but merely that it would have been nice had they offered a model for 'premium' XNA content along side the free stuff..
Even if you're restricted to local distribution (aleviating the need for localisation) it would be better than nothing and a nice intermediary step in between setting up shop as a proper dev house & getting a publishing contract & dropping out freeware..)

 

Not a doubt in my mind he could, if he really wanted to.

I never said it would be easy, but saying publishing something on XBLA/PSN is far beyond an ambitious developer is not true. I seem to recall that the investment for XBLA was about $100k. Not a small amount of money, but finding 10 investors willing to put in $10k is not impossible, especially if you are good.

I must admit the eBay for games sort of thing is very appealing, but I just don't see it being feasible.

I understand what you are saying.

 

This is the same for pretty much any creative endeavour unless you're established. If you want to write a book, you write it with no knowledge of whether someone will publish it or not, but until you've written it you can't offer it to them in the hopes they will. If you want to get into 3D graphics, you need to create a demo reel, spending a lot of time and effort, with no guarantees you'll be accepted for a place at the job you want. If you want to be a singer/song-writer, you have to write the songs before anyone will publish you - you can't say to a music company 'please give me a contract because I'll be great'! And indeed, having a publishing deal is no guarantee of making money. You could invest 6 months in creating a game, have a publisher take it up, float it on a download service, and find its unpopular and doesn't reimburse you enough for your effort. It's a gamble of risks versus potential gains.

I think the real focus of the professional side to XNA is university students. They have the time to invest, and it's what they want to do. XNA gives them a chance to showcase themselves, and from there to land positions in the biz. Without this platform, they'd have to go the webgame route with less, or at least more complex, opportunities to convert interest in the product to a product being sold. flOw was online for how long? How much money would That Game Company have made without being taken up by Sony and given the opportunity? Wouldn't it be beneficial for like developers to have the exposure of releasing to a YouTube games service, where players would rate it highly, it'd float to the top ten, and eager publishers scouting for the next big thing would have it brought to their attention without them either having to randomly come upon it from gaming blogs links or whatever?

 

I think that's asking too much of bedroom developers! Marketing yourself and drumming up investors is a whole different skillset to developing games, and if you're already wanting these developers to handle programming, art, sound, and everything themselves, asking them also to be business entrepreneurs is asking more than most mortal men can manage! The Holy Grail of homebrew is simplifying it, so people with talent to develop games aren't being locked out of getting anywhere because they lack the money to get their games produced, or lack the knowhow to publish themselves, or lack the training to be able to work the business side. Authors have agents who handle all the yucky, boring business side of writing books leaving them to be creative - totally opposite skillsets. Homebrew game development ought to offer something similar, letting the creative types be creative.

 

You'll never hear me say that XNA is a bad thing.

However, there are some flaws in your logic. I can in fact write a novel, publish the first chapter for free online, open a pay-pal account and have people wire in money to be able to read the rest. I could even open up a credit card number and have people donate money should they care to. Same for mp3 etc. and for the mp3 situation there are in fact already several sites that take care of practically everything for you in that respect.

And last but not least, there's the shareware and trial versions for software and games and it has been there for a long time already.

I think that might also be a good first step for Microsoft - offer users an option to donate points voluntarily to authors of XNA games.

 

And how well are you going to do as a complete unknown in getting enough people to see your manuscript that the percentage who pay to read more justifies the time and effort in writing it? How well could you do with this model if 10,000 other people are using the same method and you become just another name in the ocean of choice?

Making money from an endeavour is different to earning a living from it! You can publish your own software with PayPal payments to download. It could even be a great game/app. If no-one visits your website though, your market is so small that it doesn't matter how good the game is. You only need to go on Tucows or similar sites and look up applications to see the zillions of competing products. Creating a product is only part of successfully making money from it. Selling it is just as important, and where you can't guarantee making money even with a finished product, a work-in-progress is far less likely to generate considerable interest that'll lead to decent ROI.

This IMO is where XNA is maybe headed. The versions of quality titles that appear here would be cut-down, more like demos, with developers only investing the full effort when they landed a full contract. You reduce outlay to a fraction of the full experience, and where it'd still be a risk of making nothing back, it'd be less of a risk than making a full game and finding you're unable to sell it. this is equivalent to writing the first three chapter of your novel and sending it with a synopsis to agents and publishers. If they accept it, you do the work. If not, you've wasted that time creating those chapters but haven't wasted the time creating the entire book!

 

About making money from game that infringes copyrights: please note that law is equally buggy in US as everywhere else. MS can charge hosting fees and make money out of it, not out of content itself. Just like escorts charge for time, not for sex. It's all up to lawyers I guess.

 

Well it was supposed to be a light hearted jab at the remark archangelmorph made, point being someone with high ambitions wouldn't be sitting on their ass waiting for some publisher to show up at their doorstep and give them 15% of the sales. But it missed the mark, apparently by quite some distance.

Going way off topic, anyone that can't market themselves is going to have alot of problems going anywhere, whether they be self-employed or work at EA.

Publishing contracts always have entire sections on indemnification and limitation of liability for copyright and patent violations. I think they might just have a purpose.

 

Interview with Chris Satchell:

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=131505

 

This is not the thread for it, and has already been discussed:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1132366&postcount=27

Those links don't get down to the matter at hand which was the royalty rates. This is not a thread for you to derail with half-information and fud that has been clarified (as best as possible) and discussed already in the thread above. This is not a vs. thread to push your or competitor's agendas. This is a thread for XNA.

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/02/xbla_royalty_rate_changes_clos.php
http://www.jakeworld.org/JakeWorld/...08.xml&key=23/02/2008 12:54:28 PM&#AnchorHere

 

XNA 3.0 CTP is out. Supports only VS 2008, Windows and Zune (no 360 support in this release).
http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2...udio-3-0-community-technical-preview-ctp.aspx

 

That's great, I didn't know they were going to get the beta going so quickly. I'm a member, but unfortunately my current project is nowhere near ready for submission yet.

 

It's beta. You will probably have to resubmit for point release this fall.

 

I thought only US members could submit to the beta but apparently not..

I would try out the submission process but my game is no where near ready for that yet..

On another note..

The timed demos they released a while back of a load of XNA developed games (including The Dishwasher) have for some reason suddenyl become active again..

I've been playing the Dishwasher demo for the past few months now while every time i load it up it says "you have 0 days remaining"

 

Probably some bug in countdown code.

 

Very strange that they're 'forcing' content producers to charge for their games.