Xbox LIVE Community Games

By: Derek Yu

On: July 24th, 2008

New details about Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Community Games service were released this week. Community Games allows members of the XNA Creators Club ($99/year) to sell games on XBLA after going through a peer review system.

Here are some of the important details:

– No free games! Developers using the service must charge 200 to 800 points for their games ($2.50 to $10).

– How much you charge is partially determined by your games’s file size! “Creators can chose to sell their 50 MB games for 200 Microsoft Points, or sell their larger 150 MB games for either 400 or 800 Microsoft Points.”

– Creators will receive 70% of the revenue as a baseline, although Microsoft may choose to “invest” in certain games and deduct 10-30% revenue during that time, in exchange for special promotion of the game on the console and on Xbox.com. “Certified” XBLA developers are now (as far as we know) receiving 35-45% revenue as a baseline, by comparison.

– Each game that gets sold will have a “free timed trial” built in by the system (i.e. the developer doesn’t have to rig the trial him or herself).

– The service is in beta right now, with about 60 active games (including a “musical game for babies?!”). It’s going to launch in the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe in early 2009.

So they’re opening up the platform like Apple did with the iPod/iPhone, except that the community decides which games will sell and which games won’t. Other than the questionable file size/price thing, that sounds pretty reasonable to me!

There’s a walkthrough of the service from February on Gamasutra.

(Thanks, arrogancy!)

Posted in Business, Community, Developers, Xbox 360 | Tags: Microsoft

Paul Cunningham

There was initially some confusion about the filesize / price announcement but MS clarified it on the Creators forum.

50 meg games can actually be sold for 200, 400 or 800 points.

Over that, you must sell for either 400 or 800.
Radix

“Microsoft may choose to â€œinvestâ€ in certain games and deduct 10-30% revenue during that time”… can the developers choose to say no, thanks?
Paul Cunningham

Nope, they can’t :(
http://www.0xdeadc0de.org/ Eclipse

finally something seems to move in the right, indie, direction.
deku

it beter come to aus is all i have to say
Blake

I’m working on a game for this new service, and I think it’s a pretty fair deal. Sure it’s got some quirks (no free games, bah!) but it seems to be an easy distribution system for developers to release their games to a console and have people around the world download them.

It’s taken the XNA team a while to get all this figured out, but they are still making good on their promises. (Now easier pc distribution, and it’ll be a lot better)
http://www.shotbeak.com Tr00jg

This is kinda awesome! A massive platform if you ask me.

/me ponders to continue his Roach Toaster XNA remake.
PHeMoX

No free updates / map packs that kind of stuff either when you have to charge per size, right?

Bummer… on the other hand, it’s definitely a step in the right direction!
Gorgoo

I can sort of understand the “No free games” policy, since if this gets popular, it’s going to be using a lot of bandwidth, and Microsoft might end up losing money from it if too many games were free.

The idea sounds good to me, actually. The “investing” in a game without the creator’s consent does seem kind of strange, but I’d guess that the boost in downloads you’d get from being advertised could outweigh the lower amount of money you’d be getting per download.
Bezzy

One thing I’m confused about – the vetted games which go through to be sold… are they sold to the mainstream? Or do you have to join the creator’s club before buying them?

Or does joining the creator’s club just mean you’re allowed to submit/vote on other stuff?
Trotim

Parts of Europe? What parts?
0rel

me wants TIGSÂ® points + TIGSÂ® CCP (TIGS Creators Club Premium)!

why not selling game albums in form of zip files? (like the one from the poppenkast 3 hour compo)

as much as i welcome all that democratizing stuff, as much do i fear these hollow orange smilies without smile.

i mean, the internet is free and open, all the time for the vast majority of all people. SDL and many other great free tools are already out there for years. – now, after so many young folks were attracted enough by games, and were logically willing to make some themselves, the jumbo dev industries can launch their console user-factory with ease… -> the democratization is a lie. they will sell more machines that way, thus more AAA titles too, and the “community” / user-base will grow all the time cause members automatically advertise their platform (viral marketing). plus: they earn 30% of each sold game. plus: C# as a Java rip-off and XNA as proprietary framework will keep people tied to MS Xbox for ever : PANIC !!!

i don’t know where this finally will lead to. first of all, it will be great for gameing as whole, that’s for sure. many new things could happen, cause this platform is much different than most existing casual web portals (better hardware / different audience). but i think, after a couple of years the gaming world will finally explode… the same thing as with YouTube or eBay happened somehow. so many crappy and less-than-mediocre things will appear in one huge market place. but at that point, so many people will already be intensely involved with game developement, so that games will be more accepted as stand-alone art form. as a cultural activity, much like film or music. so, many developers and “game bands” will be pissed of by these big, crowded console portals, and then, so my prediction, INDIE GAME LABELS will appear! these can control the content much better, similar to existing music labels. by then, games already will have evolved and are something more like a unified digital multimedia-format (audio-visual experiences, fl0w trend, e.g. new genres without goals). these games can be treated as logical advancements of music albums (Everyday Shooter), cause the cd album will be vanished completely at that point.

if that’s really gonna happen, i just say: why not just avoid all the trouble?
TIGS is world’s first open indie label :D
cheers!
FISH

i am very excited.
Paul Cunningham

@Bezzy – any Xbox owner will be able to download and play the games (provided they are in the correct regions obviously). Only developers require a CC subscription to submit their games

@Trotim – from the announcement

…

In which regions will developers be able to sell their games at launch?

Creators Club Premium members in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain will be able to create, share and sell their games on Xbox LIVE when Community Games launches this holiday. We will look to add support for additional countries soon after the service launches this holiday.

…

If the full fall release follows the same format as the beta, developers outside of those regions will still be able to submit their games.
wormguy

Well, damn. I’m tempted to make an XNA game now.
GameboyAdvanced

Sounds like more bullshit!
FISH

re: orel: indie game label

the company we started this year, Polytron, aims to eventually establish itself as an indie game label.

think of something like WARP records, but for small, weird games.

Fez will be the first of these.
or maybe not, anyway, it’s gonna be one.
0rel

Polytron FTW! :)
Paul Cunningham

Just to clarify something I posted.

It’s been confirmed that only CC subscribers in the regions mentioned will be able to submit to peer review at launch (unlike the beta where all CC members could publish their stuff)
bateleur

This is good stuff. Nice to have some positive news after the XBLA royalty cut earlier in the year.

I wonder how hard it will be to discover games released this way? There’s going to be thousands of them… scrolling down a list that long sounds immensely tedious.
Paul Cunningham

I’m not sure whether navigation has been announced yet. You will be able to browse them from Xbox.com as well though. In fact, you can purchase them over the Web and they’ll download to your Xbox the next time you log on.

I’m going to be offering XBLCG conversion services for devlopers who want to see their games on the Xbox but don’t want to commit to the development themselves.