It’s the glass half full/half empty argument in full effect. Let’s rip.
So, by now dear readers, you’re probably already aware that big changes are afoot with the XBox Indie Games service. To paraphrase Bob Dylan poorly, the prices are a changing. Down. The much griped at 800 points tag? It’s bitten the dust, it is no more. Your ceiling for prices now? 400 points. Below that, 240 or 80 points. Or a pittance in real money terms. 80 points is what? Around 75 pence in UK money if my far too tired to be truly bothered researching brain is correct.
Now, I’m a purchaser of games. This is, to all intents and purposes good for me. Kinda. The less money I have to spend on games, the more I can buy. In theory, obviously. It’s naturally not a given that I spend more on games, instead I might actually spend less on the same amount of stuff. Either way, on the absolute technical level of how much I spend – I win. Woohoo.
Thing is, I’m also a developer. I need to eat, right? Now, last time I checked if I’m going to feed myself it’s going to take a fair few 75 pences to make the effort worthwhile. This is where things start getting a bit messy isn’t it?
I believe at this point, it’s appropriate to bring up the app store. Whilst there’s no doubt that the vast majority of people submitting apps/games to it aren’t going to find themselves swimming in a sea of money any time soon, there’s also no doubt that people are buying games/apps from there in vast amounts. They might not be your game, but they’re doing it all the same and heck, who knows, maybe in a game or two it might be your game. And you win. Woohoo.
There’s two fundamental differences between the app store and the Indie Games service that’s worthy of note, mind. The first is convenience. The app store is a handy little thing that you’ve got insanely easy access to and it’s not hidden away anywhere. It’s trumpeted loud and clear for all to see – it’s easy to nip onto, easy to search and easy for developers to say “hey, here’s my game – it’s on the app store”. Give folks 30 seconds or so and et voila, it’s in their hands.
The second is money. If I’m making a purchase from the app store, I’m browsing real values and paying with electronic cash. Ok, yeah, perhaps it’s one point still as we’re still talking convenience here but bear with me. If I want to make a purchase from the app store, if I know I’ve got 59p on my credit card I can purchase it in the blink of an eye. How much have I spent? 59p. Easy.
Xbox Indies doesn’t work like that. If I want to purchase a 75p game, I can’t just spend that 75p. There goes my impulse purchase. The reliance is on a) me having a spare amount of points hanging around (facilitated no doubt by the decidedly odd numbers – 80 points, 240 points – they’ve got to be designed to “give change”, no?) to make that purchase or I’ve got to buy some points. Starting at £4.25 UK squids. For a 75p purchase. The former is hopeful, the latter is a bit of a big ask.
Xbox Points almost make sense when you’re working in solid and large denominations. For microtransactions on this scale? They’re far, far from ideal because they take the impulse out of impulse purchase. You can’t just buy stuff on a whim.
Now, I don’t have hard and fast figures here, but I’d be willing to bet my last two teabags that lots of app store purchases are made because they’re cheap, they’re easy and they can be done on a whim. Problems, problems, problems. Or is it?
Well, honestly, I don’t know. I don’t have the answers because heck, we’re a couple of hours into the relaunch and all we know so far is these changes are going ahead.
As someone who buys games, I’m naturally happy with prices dropping. As someone developing games, well, it’s not quite so cut and dry as I said above. It might well be the case that yes, we’re going to see more and more people punting over their virtual pennies and pounds to make development worthwhile and so, in our little utopia we can all give away our games for bottom dollar or buy games for bottom dollar. I can’t shake the feeling that as good a move this is for the consumer pricewise, there’s needless and unnecessary barriers in the way of them actually making a purchase that need to be addressed.
“But what about me?”, I hear some developers cry. Well, Jeff Vogel touched upon this issue not long ago in a much circulated article. What is your time worth? Jeff advocates charging more for your work however you’re price capped here. The absolute maximum amount you can charge for your game is under £4. Does that mean that XBLIG isn’t a viable platform for the niche you’d sincerely hope it’d be able to attract? Again, I don’t know – but it’s abundantly clear that you’re going to need to get those sales numbers up drastically if you’re investing a great deal of money in a game… but heck, is this really any different to how it was prior?
It’s a toughie. The low cost could drive people away from developing for XBLIG, but of course – the argument (quite rightly) there is that perhaps you’re best fitted to chasing an XBLA contract if that’s your remit (but what of the “you can graduate to XBLA” claims that the service was sold on?), it could also see people flock to it further as somewhere to try out ideas, get stuff out the door and be rewarded by lots of 75 pences to pay for their food. Or it could stay the same.
I’m still of the belief that the biggest single mistake Microsoft have made with XBLIG is to not allow developers to punt out their work for free if they so choose. The PC gaming and indie scene absolutely thrives on free titles bolstering, supplementing and in some cases surpassing those chargeware ones. They’re somewhat of a creative necessity y’know? It allows people to experiment with stuff (and by people I’m referring to both developers and consumers) with a lot less of a risk overhead. From that, good things come.
75p may be as near as dammit to free as MS are seemingly willing to go but with the current set up having visibility problems on the dash (what doesn’t though? Well, except the adverts, obviously) and with a minimum spend before you can buy one – it’s a barrier indeed.
What happens from here? As I say readers, I don’t have the answers. Despite all the questions and potential problems I’ve listed above, I’m still sort of seeing this as a step in the right direction. I like paying less for stuff after all and this seems in an admittedly slightly bizarre way a reinforcement of how people should perceive XBLIG. Not to see it as somewhere to bung up megabudget games but somewhere you can have a play in and potentially reach an audience you wouldn’t have had otherwise.
For all it’s flawed implementation, XBLIG is still an unprecedented and unique and bloody brilliant service. It’s early days, and we shouldn’t forget that when judging the service as a whole. I think there’s a long way to go before it gets to what it should be, but yeah, right now I think it’s heading in the right direction.
How about you?
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I believe that you’re spot on with these observations.
I’m not particularly happy about selling my game for 75p a pop, after all the blood and sweat (and recently, tears) that have gone into it’s development, which means that I’ll actually have to *raise* my price in October (which I don’t want to do either).
However – I’m hopeful, very very hopeful, that the new dash update MS have planned soon will bring the Indy Games into the spotlight. Or at least, raise awareness among the average xbox 360 user who probably doesn’t even know that the service exists at the moment, by making the Indy Games section easier to get to, and spot in the first place.
So far I’m quite dissapointed with the number of downloads we seem to be getting vs. the number of XBox 360 LIVE users.
Hopefully MS intend to promote Indy Games a bit more later this year and help bolster sales for us developers.
Speaking as a developer I’m very much in two minds about this.
In theory the new lower price point will just encourage a wave of cheap rubbish and crap apps, however that seems to be the case already so I’ll let it slide.
I was actually targeting 200msp for my game, but I’m still worried about the removal of the higher price point. Sure there are few games released for 800 msp’s and even fewer that can justify it, but I’m concerned the enforced lower maximum price point will now be a barrier to better quality games from small pro developers appearing on the service as it’s now no longer financially viable. And these are exactly the sort of developers and games that could improve the image of the channel and therefore benefit everyone.
It does look like Microsoft have looked at the App Store, seen the success of the lower pricing there and copied it, but as the article points out there are a number of pretty major differences between it and XBIG. Active user base, ease of use (could Microsoft make it any harder?) and visibility are all crucial.
The App Store icon is on the first screen of every device and everything, regardless of developer, genre, pricepoint etc. is in the same location. On the 360 XBIG is kept very separate from everything else so it’s only people specifically looking for XBIG that end up there. Very few people just browsing will ever see the XBIG section never mind your game.
And that’s without taking into consideration all the Apple adverts where the App Store is the major selling point. Have Microsoft even mentioned that XBIG exists?
Still, I’m now very tempted to release a few smaller “demo” projects at 80msp that otherwise would never have seen the light of day.
Hmm. There’s an interesting article on gamasutra at the minute which shows that the average prices for XBLA games has increased over time – not altogether surprising, given that the size, complexity and “professionalism” of the titles has increased over time.
App store comparisons aside, dropping the ceiling for XBIG titles to 400 means that they will no longer be seen as competing directly with XBLA titles. Which is hopefully a good thing, as it means Microsoft may be more willing to promote XBIG games.
There’s still the issue around market saturation and limited search capabilities, but we’ll have to wait for the next dashboard update to see if the new ratings mechanism can make any difference…
There isn’t a game in existence that’s worth less than 1200 Points (to use a more universal currency value), IMO. Any less of a return than that, and the creator has essentially donated his efforts.
I am more likely to venture my capital toward a game if the price is lower, however, as is everyone else.
If the creator can amass more than 15 times the sales by charging 1/15th of an adequate price, then it is a good idea for him economically.
But it still devalues his work.
(And I don’t think the level of exposure XBLIG have will garner nearly enough sales to justify that devaluation.)
“There isn’t a game in existence that’s worth less than 1200 Points ”
I don’t see how you can say this with a straight face if you’ve seen the catalog for XBLIG!
I’m not talking about whether of not I’d be interested in buying it, I’m simply talking about effort.
Though there are a handful of titles I’m not so sure had any.
I actually think this is a fantastic change all around. I was thinking about releasing a text based choose your own adventure style game on the service, but I felt that $2.50 seemed a little high for a game without graphics. $1, on the other hand, would be a perfect price point, the very definition of an impulse buy.
I also know that some developers felt restricted by the requirement that they had to charge at least $5 if their game was over 50MBs so the fact that the barrier has dropped to $3 is great news for them.
If you want to charge $10, well, your game needs to be really good. If your game is really good, then you should really be talking to Microsoft about getting on XBLA. Having a distinct price distinction between the open channel (Indie Games) and the professional channel (XBLA) is a very good idea and will probably result in better promotional support from Microsoft for the open channel since it won’t be directly competing against XBLA.
And I know as a consumer, this is fantastic news. There are plenty of games on the service now that I wouldn’t be willing to pay $2.50 for, but I would definitely snap up at $1 like Monaco 360.
No, sorry.
Getting your game on XBLA requires an investment of more money than I have to spend in TWO years’ time. I’d rather eat.
It’s in the neighborhood of $3000 just to get your ESRB rating, and that’s just the content rating for the US. Europe has a different ratings board (or several). You have to pay (undisclosed amount) to sign up as an XBLA developer. You have to pay (undisclosed amount) for the development hardware. You have to pay (undisclosed amount) for each time you get MS’s certification testing, and you will fail it more than once.
There’s no good reason an indie developer shouldn’t be allowed to charge a reasonable amount, aside from that it’s MicroSoft’s court and they make the rules.
“If you want to charge $10, well, your game needs to be really good. If your game is really good, then you should really be talking to Microsoft about getting on XBLA.”
It’s funny how a $10 game on the 360 is now considered bloody expensive and therefore must be good enough to be published by Microsoft, when $10 for a PC indi game is still seen as relatively cheap.
Lowering the minimum price point might make sense in some cases, but removing the option of the higher price will have a detrimental effect on overall quality IMO. Let the customer decide whether something is worth the price or not.
It overall means that IG ain’t worth putting a lot of effort into. Which is exactly why dabbling in PC development is a good option.
However, if you crank out small, but all around good and replayable games, then I don’t see why you shouldn’t profit well from it. Most developers haven’t released those though. Most games don’t have a reason to come back to them. Once you try the trial, you either like it or don’t. The only benefit from most games released when you buy them, is that you can play them without a time limit, but what good is that if you don’t like the game in the first place?
We need more reasons for people to download the games. I’m gonna try out a method later this year, but in general, people should take notes from commercial games, especially those released in the 90s. They have a lot of things IG titles don’t(like a good single player campaign).
To be fair, if you don’t put the effort in then you can’t really expect people to fork over money, no?
An oft discounted school of thought whilst people are reacting.
Several games have already dropped to 80 pts. Some of the more noteworthy games at the new $1 price tag include:
Couple Sudoku, Beat Blox, Zoomaroom, Drum Kit, bricks4ever, sin(surfing), and The Ballet of Light & Shadow.
[...] be aware (if not, why not?) the launch of the rebranded Xbox Indie Games service brings with it a cavalcade of new prices. The lowest tier being the bargaintastic 80 points mark. Naturally, even at 80 points some stuff is [...]
They should have added the new price points in addition to the old ones. instead, they removed options, rather than adding options.
This really sucks, Microsoft destroyed ANY possibility to have better games on the service with this move.
Now they’ll get only the finest crap.
Who develop an interesting game for less than 400ms? I’d rather develop it for Iphone, or sell it on PC via a digital download service at this point.
Do not forget that MS takes a share of your earnings too, so you have to sell a *shitload* to make some real bucks.
With the “indie games” name change and the users rating i was thinking they really want to give the service a new spin, trying to get rid of the crapware. Now they just did the worst move they could.
Be happy to buy your next “4D Cyber Racer” at 400ms… I’m so out.
“Who develop an interesting game for less than 400ms?”
Plenty of people. If folks can make good and interesting games for free, why not?
Well, you can always develop a game this way: 1$=.5 hours of gameplay. That way, you don’t have to put much effort into your first game, and constantly expand your catalog using your codebase.:)