XBLA: Developers Weigh In On XBL Indie Game Price Drop
It's been a little over 2 weeks since XBL Indie Games had its prices changed, so we asked some of the top tier developers of XBL Indie Games about the changes - what they thought on the new pricing scheme, and what they plan to do for their past - and future - titles.
Nathan Fouts of Mommy’s Best Games, known for Weapon Of Choice and the upcoming Grapple Buggy, believes that “600 Microsoft Points was the right price for a high quality game on XBL Indie Games” rather than 800MSP, but that option was never available. He hopes than the new 80MSP price point will “stave off any need from Microsoft to make a 'free game' option”, and that it stays in-line with the iPhone approach. As Weapon Of Choice was already 400MSP, it will not be affected by the new changes.
Halfbrick, an independent studio in Australia, have releases two titles in their Halfbrick Fridays program on the XBL Indie Games – Blast Off and Echoes. Their issue now is for their next title, Halfbrick Rocket Racing, which they intended to sell at 200MSP, but now will need to choose between two price points. “That’s a huge gap”, says Phil Larsen, Marketing Manager at Halfbrick. “When you’re talking about selling thousands of units. The next price point up from the lowest is triple that amount. This may cause a so-called “Race to the Bottom” scenario where everyone releases games as cheap as possible just to compete, like the iPhone App Store.” Rocket Racing will “almost certainly be 240 Points, which is a nice spot to be for a full-featured game”.
Someone who has already played both sides of the XBL Indie Games and and Xbox Live Arcade Games is James Silva, creator of the wildly popular Dishwasher: Dead Samurai on XBLA and both ZSX4 Guitarpocalypse and ZP2K9 on XBL Indie Games. “I've said for awhile that I wanted a lower minimum price point”, he says, “so I'm glad about this” Speaking of his previous games James claims “If I was just releasing ZP2K9 I'd probably do 240MSP, but it's been awhile since launch so I'm going to let that go to 80MSP.”
James does wish for one change though – a middle ground cost. “I'm sure it doesn't make a huge difference in the long run, but my quasi-obsessive-compulsive side wants a 160MSP price point!”
Finally Matt Davis of Barkers Crest, the creator of Easy Golf, is a little miffed by the distaste for these lower price points by some developers. “There is only one group of people who have access to all sales data for all games”, he says, “And that group of people just happen to be the same people who made the price change. At this point in time they are the only people who can perform a strong statistical analysis on sales trends as a whole”
Are you also an XBL Indie Developer? Let us know what you think of the recent changes.
Comments
As a Indie developer I am really happy with the 80 MS point. But I am still looking to have a free price, I am have so prototye that I want to put online for the xbox, but I don't see the point of sealing those and there is no way to remove the 8 min. trial time.
About the new prices I have to agree with Jeff Ward that the new price of 240 MS points is a little of, it is just an odd number.
Posted by: J Tremblay | August 6, 2009 3:07 PM
I'm not happy for the 800ms points cut, it means that the "indie games" service will be a pool of showelware just like the previous service was, there's no place for quality games with a top price that's lower as 400ms.
Let's not forget that on PC indie games like World of Goo, Zeno Clash or Aquaria are sold at 20$, that's quite a fair price.
Posted by: Eclipse | August 6, 2009 3:44 PM
J Tremblay, don't put online prototypes, it stupid and it will flood the service, it's already full with crappy products as it is
Posted by: Eclipse | August 6, 2009 3:56 PM
I think the removable of the 800 points price as an option will basically keep this service from seeing many quality games. I personally wouldn't put the effort into something like Sol Survivor or Dust: An Elysian Tail knowing that at most I could only charge $5 for it. From what I have seen of both of these games they are easily worth $10 to $15. I think that the 800 point option needs to be revived.
I'm also not a fan of the 50 token limit. Makes doing stuff like giving free copies of the games to your friends, family, other team members, and members of the press easy, but I wouldn't mind being able to print up business cards with free codes on them to hand out at GDC and with just 50 tokens you couldn't hand out very many.
Posted by: Twist | August 6, 2009 8:00 PM
I personally wouldn't put the effort into paying 800pts for any game appearing on the Indie marketplace. So what's a dev to do?
Posted by: Karma | August 7, 2009 2:28 PM
I'd be interested to know why there are only 3 pricepoints. Why not have more to give developers more choices?
Posted by: Paul | August 9, 2009 12:18 PM