XBLA: GamerBytes Analysis: XNA Community Games Sales Data Revealed
[Compiling many of the statistics from XNA Community Games' first data dump, GamerBytes editor Ryan Langley takes an in-depth look at what the divulged sales numbers mean for the future of the service.]
Since the start of the XNA Community Games on the Xbox Marketplace it's been well known that the developers had no way to look at any data about their titles. As of Saturday however, download history is now available to game submitters, complete with specific details on how many trial games have been download, the amount of sales they make on a daily basis, and which regions they were bought.
Many developers have openly discussed their sales through the XNA Creators forums, or on their own websites. Several others have been in contact with us and are allowing us to display their own totals. I thank every developer who was willing to speak with us and be a part of these statistics.
Below is a chart of sales for 27 different games - the amount of trial versions downloaded, and the amount of games bought. Some of the data is incomplete, but we've done our best to be as accurate as possible.
The earnings are based on the 70 / 30 scale suggested by Microsoft for how much developers will earn through XNA Community Games, but this might change in the future, with Microsoft taking an extra 10-30% depending on the amount of promotion they give a game. (However, right now, the XNA admins says: "For the time being, we've decided to maintain the 70/30 split across the board whether your game was featured or not"):
These games are sorted by the date that the games were released on, to help us understand the long tail that a game may have. Those titles with an asterisk next to their names only gave rough estimates on their sales.
From the statistics, we can tell that the XNA Community Games have not gotten off to the best of starts. After nearly six months of being available most games have done very little, and the amount of trials downloaded per game is still very small compared to the online Xbox user base.
Back in 2007 Microsoft cited that the conversion rate between those who downloaded the demo for an Xbox Live Arcade title and bought the game was 17%. While this conversion rate has most likely dropped by as much as 50% since, the expanded userbase of the Xbox 360 has made up for it. For the XNA Community Games we're seeing a wide variety of sales between two different pricing SKUs.
The 6 Community Games we've tallied that sold for 400MSP we can see a low amount of people who decided to upgrade to the final game. Games like Blow, Exhaust and Snake360 all had a large amount of content. But much like the iPhone app store, it appears that few people feel the urge to spend $5 on a quality product, even when Xbox Live Arcade has been keeping mostly to higher price points.
While most of the 200MSP titles have had similar conversion rates, there have been some breakout hits that have done much better. Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp, Groov, ZP2K9 and Solar have all sold better, with Johnny Platform being the top seller within our data.
Each one of those games are a quality product for the 200MSP they cost, but one thing that these games also got was exposure through other mediums. Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp and Groov were discussed on the popular Rebel FM and Listen UP podcasts, which spread the word of mouth for the game.
Speaking to Groov developer Julian Kantor, we found that after the podcast plugs the game rose from 93 sales the previous week to 157 the next. During March Groov achieved an conversion rate of 37.8%, with the help of being discussed on both podcasts again, and was mentioned in the Community Games column in latest issue of OXM UK.
Solar is one of the most recent additions to the XNA Community Games, and the sales show it's doing well for itself. It's one of those games that brings a different experience to the platform, something along the lines of flOw or Braid have beforehand.
One thing Solar has done is advertise, and in a way that no other has - through Flash. The developer has created a altered version of the game and released it through flash portal Newgrounds. Currently there have been over 11,000 views of the version, which specifically states you can now get the game on XNA Community Games.
ZP2K9, created by Ska Studios, did well despite being an online multiplayer shooter, which is difficult to cater for, as XNA titles do not support leaderboards or any way to know which of your friends currently own the game. It will be interesting to see how well their game goes this week with the addition of Dishwasher: Dead Samurai to the Xbox Live Arcade.
Another high profile Community Game title was Weapon Of Choice by ex-Insomniac Studios developer Nathan Fouts. While we do not have any specific data for the game, Nathan has come out and said that the game has had less than 10,000 sales.
This is far better than the 3,500 we've seen here, and in comparison to the other 400MSP titles that's still a good amount of sales. However Nathan intended to become a big part of the indie game movement, and for someone who wishes to make a living off XNA Community Games it doesn't appear to be as well as hoped. Weapon Of Choice, like the other 400MSP titles, had quite a low conversion rate from demo to full game.
For the few applications that have made it to the XNA Community service, EZMuze, Remote Masseuse and Clock 24-7 did quite well for themselves. Remote Masseuse, which itself got a lot of attention for its "partner" based rumble feature, got a lot of plugs on gaming blogs like Kotaku and Joystiq, which the large amount of trial downloads can be attributed to.
There are numerous high interest titles that have decided to not openly discuss their sales, including Colosseum, Biology Battle, RC-AirSim, CarneyVale Showtime, Easy Golf, FirePlace and Miner Dig Deep which were most likely in the upper threshold of sales. We currently know that the Biology Battle developers will be issuing a press release by the end of the week.
To many developers, these statistics have been quite disappointing, but there certainly is a quality bar that many of these small developers must attempt to hit and exceed, particularly in the user interface of their games.
Some hear that developers on the iPhone are making thousands of dollars a day, but the reality is that they are the minority, and the other 19,000 apps have probably not made back the development costs. For those in it to make good, quality products - don't give up on your dreams just yet, we're only 6 months in.
Over the coming days, GamerBytes will discuss other sale statistics for XNA Community Games, including average sales per day, where in the world the sales are coming from, as well when games have gotten their peak sales. We will also be analyzing what the developers of XNA Community Games need to do in order to increase their sales, and what Microsoft have to do to bring XNA Community Games to the forefront. Stay tuned!
Comments
I hope we get some details from some of the bigger games that have not released that info yet, but as a fan of XNA games I hope Microsoft starts promoting them more to help drive some sales. Otherwise all the best indie developers will move to more profitable platforms.
Posted by: Jigsaw hc | March 30, 2009 4:20 PM
There are few things that MS need to do to improve this, bring back game recommendations for friends to the dashboard, introduce a user scoring system for games so browsers can make informed download choices and thirdly, some advertising would be nice. I think the third thing may happen at the launch of Kudo.
Posted by: XboxHornet | March 30, 2009 4:33 PM
The XNA community can start improving games by filtering out the dross. There seems to be no QA with regard to game quality. There has to be a standard. I stopped checking what was available on the marketplace a while ago simply because the products on offer are routinely poor.
Posted by: Karma | March 30, 2009 4:35 PM
Agreed with Karma. The amount of garbage far outweighs the few gems on the service.
Posted by: MisterSmith | March 30, 2009 5:53 PM
Great article Rlan, I have been dying for something like this to pop up on the net.
Posted by: Gowans007 | March 30, 2009 6:26 PM
The easy way to fix the garbage outweighs the gems problem is to have a ranking system. Allow those that bought the game to review it. Then give us an option to sort on highest rated games, etc.
Thanks for the article!
Posted by: Mike | March 30, 2009 7:22 PM
Even if MS intends to have a ranking system, they are slow-moving enough that it won't be enough for a lot of people, and many just won't go to CG anyway because they know it's hard to sort through. I mean they used to have a "Popular" section which seems to have dissapeared because the same set of games would stay at the top, even if they were drab. So you also have to worry about hard-to-topple games at the top that new, possibly good release don't get exposure.
Posted by: Stegersaurus | March 30, 2009 7:49 PM
I produce a weekly Community Games review show called, xnaroundup.com.
I guess I'm one of the few people who don't feel like the stats are all that bad.
I'm looking at this as the initial stage of the initiative, if you're expecting a smash hit blockbuster, yes, you are going to be disappointed when you only make a few thousand dollars. But if you are the guy developing a game in your basement, then hey, a few grand is pretty friggin good!
Of course the audience is going to grow, and once MS feels comfortable with the amount and quality of the content available there they most likely will promote it.
Going forward, developers would be wise to adjust their business model accordingly to suit the data.
Thanks for publishing this data, its awesome to see what different games are earning.
Posted by: xnaroundup | March 30, 2009 8:09 PM
@Karma
At this point, there is zero quality control beyond a peer review. As peer reviewers, our job is to fail any game that crashes, is unplayable due to technical issues, or contains content that Microsoft specifically marks as unsuitable (full nudity, for example). If a game doesn't crash and has none of the disallowed content, we are supposed to pass the game regardless of quality, content or our opinion of it.
Community Games, AFAIK, is supposed to be an open forum where anyone can sell anything. Unfortunately it means that there's crap too. However, what I'm hoping is that this sales data says "if you release crap, it won't sell," and the amount of new crap will decrease.
I am confident that my game, Snake360, sold as much as it did because some folks could see past the mediocre graphics and enjoy the gameplay and vast number of features. There are lots of great games on Community Games and I hope that over time, the general public will take the same route, see past the fact that there is some crap on CG, and enjoy the quality on there. And as many of us know, there is quite a bit of it so far.
Posted by: yyr | March 30, 2009 11:11 PM
OK this is a bit weird, I mean really who cares how wonderful a snake game is, its still a snake game. People are not bustin down doors demanding snake games. Of all the games on your list only 2 or 3 are really worth $2.50. This says nothing about XBLCG but more about the quality of what the producers are offering, which is pretty crappy. I am not picking on snake in particular but how many people want that? How many people want the 4 different takes on pong or the 5 or more takes on breakout, really.
Posted by: gamerX | March 31, 2009 12:36 AM
Well what keeps me from buying Community Games is the simple fact that you cannot PLAY them unless you´re connected to the internet (unlike the xbla-Games).
Posted by: Hugo360 | March 31, 2009 12:45 AM
I have been more than happy with the sales of my game, I do it all for fun and hope to provide in-expensive fun for other people, the actual figures are much better than I expected.
Posted by: Fish | March 31, 2009 1:15 AM
Lots of great stats in one place. Thanks GamerBytes and the developers who provided them!
Posted by: RMVX | March 31, 2009 1:46 AM
I just made a post over on my site with the sales figures for Audiball:
http://www.indiecisivegames.com/site/?p=68
No one can accuse Audiball of being another take on Pong or Snake, but apparently people weren't interested in a guitar-controlled puzzle gameplay angle either. Oh well, here's hoping for better luck next time.
Posted by: Holden Link | March 31, 2009 2:30 AM
List updated with some inaccuracies fixed and a few games added to it.
Posted by: Ryan Langley | March 31, 2009 3:47 AM
I had to go back and look at audiball, It doesn't say to plug in the guitar controller. It doesnt specifically say use the guitar, maybe a picture of the guitar or say plug in guitar? I tried with the xbox control and just got frustrated.
Posted by: gamerX | March 31, 2009 6:39 AM
Any chance we could get the stats in excel or text format so we can run analysis of our own? I really want to see how the games did on a week-by-week.
Posted by: th15 | March 31, 2009 11:02 AM
I can't help but wonder why my game Tomato Blaster has had such low download numbers compared to other games, despite having a reasonable sale rate. I have had a few people say the name put them off but I can't see this making that much difference. I have also had a few good reviews which don't seem to of made much difference. There was a fault with the Popularity order on Marketplace at the end of February which made my game appear at the end of the popularity list for the first two weeks it was out, maybe this had some effect.
Posted by: Dan | March 31, 2009 12:24 PM
Dan: My guess is the name. With no user ratings in place pretty much all people have to go on right now is the name and maybe the box art.
Posted by: Fish | March 31, 2009 6:06 PM
Dan, I just sent the trial of Tomato Blaster to my download queue and I'll check it out, but I honestly don't feel like the screenshots are all that great. There should be more action in them, or a gameplay shot that conveys what the player is doing at the moment. An action shot might help the box art, too... I know it's a great way to describe the game but I can't help thinking that more action and less words might help.
Of course, if I recall correctly, there was a deluge of titles released around that same time. So your exposure on New Arrivals was extremely limited, which did not help either.
There are other places where you can try to promote Tomato Blaster. Posting about Snake360 on many different Web forums definitely helped me get the word out a lot. In my experience, paid ads with Google or Facebook don't go nearly as far as word of mouth and posts on many different forums.
Anyway, you have something else still going for you. 30,000+ people downloaded the trial of Snake360 and most decided they weren't interested. On the other hand, not too many folks have tried your game so you still have a shot with them. Just do your best to get the word out...good luck =)
Posted by: yyr | March 31, 2009 7:51 PM
The problem with Tomato Blaster is the name and the box art.
Posted by: cjelly | March 31, 2009 9:36 PM
How in the world would MS take an extra 30%. That would be 100% and that would be fuzzy math. The fact that it is 70% as it is now is too much as is.
Posted by: Jlee | April 1, 2009 12:42 AM
MS takes 30% basic, the extra 30% would mean that they take 60%. Not the other way around.
Posted by: th15 | April 1, 2009 2:54 AM
I am currently in development for my own game on XNA Community Games and personally these numbers look good. Most of the games are developed by only a few people in there spare time. For my game we only have two developers who are also the designer, artist, and audio techs. The oldest game in the chart at the time this was release was only 5 months old and the newer titles are making allot more and faster. To make a couple hundred to a couple thousand per month for part time work is pretty good. Most of the games I have tried on community games are very poorly conceived and put together. The bottom line is more work a developer puts into the game at all stages will greatly reflect how much they will make in the end.
Posted by: jason | April 15, 2009 9:11 PM
I'm sorry, I don't care if Nathan was an ex-insomniac developer or not, his game kinda sucked. It was pretty boring, the controls were un-intuitive, the 'help' screens were extremely irritating as presented and the narrative was sad. It was one of those concept meets execution problems.
I downloaded it, played it for about 5 minutes, and deleted it.
Good games will get higher conversion rates, obviously.
These being older stats, I'd be interested in how well some of the newer and better games are doing. Their dev blogs would lead me to believe, fairly well.
-db
Posted by: db | December 25, 2009 10:41 PM