Devs Finally Finding Success With Xbox Indie Games 65
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."
Re:Signal to noise ratio (Score:1, Insightful)
It's really difficult to get through to the good stuff.
No, not really - try sorting by user rating.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a stupid comparison. XBox Live Arcade is the equivalent of the PSN's games as you still need to go through Sony/Microsoft's certification and review process to get published, the barrier to entry is much, much higher. XBox Live Arcade has been making a small fortune for developers there pretty much since the console's release.
This is talking about XBox Live Indie Games which is completely different- it's a place where developers can publish with no barrier to entry other than a $49 4 month subscription (or $99 for a year) and peer review as to whether your game actually works and doesn't crash.
We're talking about people being able to spend no more than a week developing a game, $49 to publish it on XBox Live Indie games, and still earning over £100,000. That's quite a contrast to having to spend months- possibly making it a full time job, and thousands of pounds and then still having to wait in line at the whim of Microsoft/Sony to publish.
This is why apple better not have a lock in app st (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why apple better not have a lock in app store with fees / and something like a 30% cut of sales and the apple app store censorship will just slow down people in makeing games.
A open market with no fees and no lock in / censorship. Is alot better then $99 to be able to come out with free games and even then you have to deal with censorship.
open market = more games over time vs a few good ones after a longer time.