Indie Game Developer Finds Success On Xbox 360 -- Est. $825K Sales In First Week

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/indie-game-developer-finds-success-on-xbox-360-est-825k-sales-in-first-week

by vascoos01 • 18 years ago

34 15 18 years ago

iigs2• 18 years ago

article:

At $15 per game, that’s $825,000 in first week gross sales. Microsoft takes a cut -- we don't know how much -- but that's still a really impressive debut.

comment:

I think Microsoft takes a 33% cut.

article:

Jonathan said that with his projected sales (which he didn’t break out), he should be able to make game developing a full-time gig.

For half a million (post-MS but pre-IRS) dollars I'd consider quitting my day job and giving it, oh, say five years of a shot.

pkaler2• 18 years ago

The answer is, that it depends. Revenue split used to be 60/40, with 60% going to the developer.

Depending on when Jonathan Blow signed his deal, he may be getting as high as 60% or as low as 30%.

I blogged about the issue here: http://parveenkaler.com/2008/03/08/iphone-app-store-revenue-...

iigs2• 18 years ago

Wow, that's horrible. I would really feel slapped in the face if I had spent the time to learn XBox360 development and they shifted the royalties across the 50% boundary.

70/30 seems entirely fair, 60/40 feels like the pain point to me, and less than 50/50 seems like they should be giving me health insurance.

What a great example of why carrier "portals" never have content you want on them. Hopefully Apple's honest and open approach to licensing really raises the bar for everyone else.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game) has a basic description of the game itself.

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3169204 and http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/braid/review.html are some good reviews of the game.

For my part, I'll be playing it this weekend.

steveplace• 18 years ago

Penny Arcade had a good blurb on it too, I think.

dmix2• 18 years ago

I played the trial on my Xbox this morning. It's a very well designed game. It's like Shrek in the way that it takes old archetypes and applies in a new and interesting way.

The score and visuals are what sold me though.

ralph• 18 years ago

Bug: the whole of the URL isn't turned into a link in the parent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game)

dmix2• 18 years ago

And now the VCs come calling.

s3graham• 18 years ago

Live Arcade is typically 70/30 (70 for developer), but it's negotiated on a case-by-case basis. Hope he got more!

Note that this isn't a "crap-out-a-game-make-a-mil"; he was working on this game for, I believe, 5-ish years.

(worth buying and playing, btw)

pkaler2• 18 years ago

The 70% cut is a very, very special case.

snprbob86• 18 years ago

70/30 is the default case for the upcoming Xbox LIVE Community Games: http://creators.xna.com/en-us/XboxLIVECommunityGames

Microsoft only takes more than 30% if you are lucky enough to have your game featured (read: you'll make it all back and more in volume).

Disclaimer: I work on Game Studio and the XNA Framework

DarkShikari• 18 years ago

Many have feared recently that smaller game developers would be pushed out of the business; clearly, with better and better graphics expected out of games and development costs shooting through the roof, they wouldn't have a chance, would they?

But the irony of it all is that the exact opposite seems to be happening: sick of complicated, high-budget, high-price yet often low-quality games, gamers are looking for simpler but more innovative and interesting games to hold their attention.

This is even happening in the non-indie scene; look how wildly popular Portal was, despite the fact that it was a 5-hour $20 game made by the small team behind Narbacular Drop, with some extra resources from Valve. If anything, its release far overshadowed the higher-profile and higher-budget Half-Life Episode 2.

Of course, the biggest chance for indie developers to make their debut is in genres that are classically inexpensive to develop games for: strategy games, adventure games, old-fashioned RPGs, shooters, etc. One example of this is the wildly popular (at least in Japan) Touhou shmup series; a total of 7 PC shooter games (plus the 5 older PC-98 games) all made by a single developer, despite the fact that he has a day job, too. The games are so successful that there's an entire convention each year dedicated solely to products related to his games--and yet despite the success, the only ones involved in production are that single developer and his many, many beers.

Xbox Live Arcade is a perfect ground for promoting such games; if you put a low-priced game that looks interesting in front of the eyes of tens of millions of people with points to spend, you're sure to get loads of sales.

utnick• 18 years ago

I wonder how much time and money he spent developing Braid.

The art and music is very good. Probably not cheap.

anotherjesse2• 18 years ago

He has been working on it for a long time. (from at least 2006).

Jeff Lindsay (who was one of the founders of Super Happy Dev House - and DevJavu) has been raving about it for about that long and is such a fan of indie games he (and friends) is creating a site to catalog them - http://db.tigsource.com/games/braid

Indie Game Developer Finds Success On Xbox 360 -- Est. $825K Sales In First Week

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