Xbox Live Community Games launching in Fall 2008

[Acert93]

XNA seems to fall behind the radar a lot, especially with games like LBP and FarCry 2 bringing modding and user created content and games to the market in mainstream channels. That said, Xbox Live Community Games is launching this fall. Some interesting tidbits in there; for example every game costs $2-$10, all games have demos, and game makers keep 70% of revenue.

I wonder which developers here are working on projects? :smile:

 

[RobertR1]

This will be interesting to watch. I'd like to see more "Braid" like creative games come out of this.

 

[pipo]

...all games have demos...

Fab. My single biggest complaint on PSN.

 

[AntShaw]

Sounds similar to the App Store for the iPhone. Which has already proven to be very very successful for Apple and profitable for developers.

 

[AzBat]

XNA seems to fall behind the radar a lot, especially with games like LBP and FarCry 2 bringing modding and user created content and games to the market in mainstream channels. That said, Xbox Live Community Games is launching this fall. Some interesting tidbits in there; for example every game costs $2-$10, all games have demos, and game makers keep 70% of revenue.

I wonder which developers here are working on projects? :smile:

Hey Joshua, welcome to July 22, 2008. Microsoft announced this back then...

http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2008/07/22/introducing-xbox-live-community-games.aspx

BTW, the demos are all time-based and they're not going to be allowing developers to give away their games for free. Plus, if they decide to promote your game on the dashboard, then they can take an additional 10-30% for a "promotional fee". There by reducing your profit to possibly 40%. Check the FAQ for more details...

http://creators.xna.com/en-us/XboxLIVECommunityGames

Tommy McClain

 

[PARANOiA]

BTW, the demos are all time-based

That's a very good idea for indie devs who don't necessarily have the resources to do a second demo-only build.

 

[AzBat]

That's a very good idea for indie devs who don't necessarily have the resources to do a second demo-only build.

True, but they still have to build specific code to support it in the final package. It could end up like they have to build 2 games in one.

Tommy McClain

 

[tinokun]

All Xbox LIVE Community Games are required to provide a trial mode, so people can play the game for a while before deciding if they want to purchase it. You have several choices as to how much time you want to spend implementing this.

You can do no work at all, and your game will still have a good trial mode experience. Here's what the framework does for you:

Users can play the game for a fixed period of time.

When the timer runs out, we will bring up a screen over the top of your game, saying "hey, this trial has expired: do you want to purchase the game?"

If they decide to purchase, the screen goes away and they can continue playing.

If they say no, we exit the game.

Some games want to detect when they are running in trial mode. You might change your level selection based on this, giving the trial an easy but exciting first level that will suck people in, and only enable the slower paced training missions after they purchase it.

From:
http://blogs.msdn.com/shawnhar/archive/2008/09/17/trial-mode-in-xna-game-studio-3-0.aspx

 

[catisfit]

It will be interesting to see if there's any viability in XNA Creator's Club itself when we finally see some download/upsell/profit figures. The tools are free, the subscription is cheap and you can get games out to a console audience, so it looks very tempting.

My concerns are that it's notionally homebrew, with no barriers to entry beyond a peer review, and it's sub-XBLA. This to me sounds like it won't get a great deal of traffic (i.e. it will generally be seen as poorer quality and avoided), and the best hopes for the games are not to make money, but to be picked up for a "full" XBLA release. Of course, if your game stands out enough to reach that target, the extra 10-30% "promotional" royalty will almost certainly have been activated too.