Devs Finally Finding Success With Xbox Indie Games

McBacon writes with this excerpt from Wired.co.uk: "Often dismissed as a failed venture, the Xbox Indie Games programme has earned successful man-and-his-dog developers tens of thousands of pounds from sales of their homebrew games. Wired explores the success stories of this hidden marketplace. ... now, more than a year since its launch, the Xbox Indie Games are seeing something of a revival. Microsoft has made huge strides to improve the service, games are beginning to be taken more seriously and success stories are becoming more and more common. Especially for [James] Silva, a New York-based developer, who became an impromptu Indie celebrity after his game The Dishwasher won Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play competition. He says he's 'absolutely thrilled' to have seen I Maed a Gam3 w1th Zomb1es!!!1 — his latest game — become a cult hit, for gamers to flock to it in record numbers and to have sold over 200,000 copies."

So... what's the news?

[Opportunist]

ONE person managed to make money with XBox market place. Well, that's ... super. But news? Happens every day in other ventures. There's always been the suddenly-successful indie band amidst all the hyped stars, or the odd "Blair Witch" low budget movie that for some odd reason was successful.

OTOH, there are thousands making music and movies, and now games, who spend hours after hours, knowing that they will, at best, do it for their own entertainment and maybe, just maybe, get a warm meal out of it.

Re:Signal to noise ratio

[Quiet_Desperation]

There's some fun little games in there. The trick is to pop in and check what's new in the games section every couple of days. I look for new trailers, demos, arcade and indie games.

It's supposed to be a sandbox for budding developers. You're not going to find the next Mass Effect there. Are so many people really missing the point? Yeah, yeah, in this world that's a totally pointless question.

Re:Marketing

[Eraesr]

As far as marketing goes, I never understood why the indie market place is a closed off part of XBox Live. I mean, isn't part of success directly related to the potential number of customers? If you first have to pay $100 a year subscription to be able to download games (for which you have to pay again), not many people will be interested in it. Especially not when most people already pay $60 a year for an XBox Live Gold subscription.