Speaking of Indie games,long gaf post about Indie games on 360(Krilekk)
Originally Posted by LQX:
To me it seems MS was way ahead of them and even dedicated a storefront on consoles to Indie games after pushing XNA. And speaking of XNA. Why does it seem like many some indie developers looked down at that store and are almost pretending it does not exist? Their were some good stuff on there but not really quality stuff you would find on PC. Was it that limiting?
No, but there were some problems due to devs.
The first problem was a lot of devs had dreams about instant wealth and freedom and success and being able to sustain their own company. They saw the AppStore and thought it would be the same. What they failed to recognize is that anywhere in the media, be it games, movies, books or something else, 90 % of the content is a) created at a loss or b) barely makes it into the black. Only 10 % are actual financial successes. With everybody failing to know even the basic principles of economics they were all in for a bad surprise when their (pretty good) first batch of games didn't get anywhere close to the results they'd hoped for.
The second problem was that devs didn't realize they can't just make a game they love and sell it to millions. You have to create a game that your audience loves, even if you hate it. Of course the best case scenario is that you both love the game, because it shows in the amount of polish you put in. And it didn't help either that devs thought it would be a good idea to spam the market with hundreds of one or two stick shooters, a genre that was such a niche even on XBLA that it was no doubt selling even worse on XBLCG.
The third problem was a result of the first two. Devs started blaming Microsoft for the bad market (Microsofts original vision for XBLCG (Xbox Live Community Games, as it was called back then) was to have a public showcase for devs to find publishers and go to XBLA) and customers for the bad sales and decided to make cheap stuff instead. Not cheap as in 80 points games, cheap in "I spent four weeks on this, go have fun". The result was even worse. Now experimental games with gameplay worth ten minutes released on the marketplace. With trials being 20 minutes long it's no surprise stuff didn't sell.
Instead it was the rise of Massage Apps and other apps in general. Those were something new, something you couldn't buy on XBLA in a better version. Game devs were furious, they blocked their games from being visible on the marketplace and bashed Microsoft even more. The sad truth is: The good games always made it to the top. Like RC Copter, probably the first big success for XBLCG, staying at the top of the charts for months and months in a row.
The fourth problem was marketing. Devs don't know shit about connecting to your potential customers. The way they thought about it was "We are in the new arrivals for a couple of days and everybody sees us and buys us. Then we are in best selling and sell even more. BAM." I spent countless hours explaining how you have to advertise your games with blogs, Youtube, Twitter, interviews, ... but most of them didn't want to hear it. Spending even more money on the game? With no guarantee to get that money back? Thanks, but no thanks.
And then the market stayed in limbo for quite some time. It's only after the inclusion of Avatars into XNA that the Indie store became a success. And again, there was stuff that simply wasn't available on XBLA. But now it was gaming stuff. Then came Minecraft and now we have a bazillion clones of the indie store and they all sell surprisingly well and other games do well and it is finally a gaming marketplace thanks to the 1 dollar games.
We could've been there much earlier. The reason why XBLCG took so long to take off was that (like the original Microsoft vision) the posterchild games of the service were taken away to release on XBLA. Of course that makes sense for the dev involved but imagine if Dishwasher or Dust had been released first on the indie store like.
Microsoft took a lot of crap for its indie endeavours but truth is they never promised anything but the ability to create games and release them to other players. It wasn't meant to sustain a large group of indies, it was meant for people that create games as a hobby and want to make some money with it. As such the store always worked great. It's just that the disillusioned game devs that spent thousands on their game and didn't get it back were much more vocal than the rest. And that lead to the public misconception that XBLCG/XBI sucks.
I'm sure the discontinuation of XNA has nothing to do with MS walking away from indies, the implementation of Windows 8 in the next Xbox just makes it so much easier to develop for it that they don't need another framework just for indies. Everybody will use the same tools.
Just checked,there are 2873 Indie games on Xbox Live(UK)
Most popular(top downloads)
1.White Noise Online
2.CastleMiner Z
3.CastleMiner
4.Avatar Laser Wars 2
5.White Noise:A tale of Horror
There is also one thing,in order to play Indie games you have to be connected to Xbox Live.No offline gameplay,always connected.
