XBLA: Gameloft Goes XBL Indie With Tank Battles
Gameloft is a world renowned company who have made a name for themselves by creating some of the best experiences to be had in the Mobile, iPhone, XBLA, PSN, WiiWare and DSiWare space. But did you expect them to try their hand at the Xbox Live Indie Games space as well?
Gameloft have announced that Tank Battles will be coming to Xbox 360's as an XBL Indie Game. You may have heard of the game before -- it's in fact a port of a game they released on the PlayStation Network last year.
Tank Battles is a high-end version of the Atari 2600 game Combat or Wii Play: Tanks! - a 4-player multiplayer game where you drive around a tank bouncing bullets off of walls and collecting power ups.
From the looks of the situation Gameloft planned to release the game on both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live, but didn't get past Microsoft's rigid approval process, effectively making this a PSN exclusive. Gameloft it seems wasn't going to have any of it, and instead of wasting that time developing it they've instead decided to release it on Xbox Live Indie Games.
It's a fascinating move by Gameloft, who are currently developing Earthworm Jim HD for XBLA, PSN and WiiWare. If this proves to be a viable platform for them we might see more games coming through this platform. Imagine if they ported popular iPhone games like Real Football, Let's Golf, Oregon Trail or even N.O.V.A to Indie Games? They'd be a big fish in a small pond, and dominate the space -- they could even legitimize it and make it more like the iPhone app store.
With the iPad Gameloft will be making more games with high resolution sprites and textures, making iPad to Xbox ports less of a hassle. The only thing standing in their way now is the lack of a price point higher than five dollars. Tank Battles was quite a bit of fun on the PS3 -- let's hope it does well. The game will be released quite soon, wel keep an eye on it until then.
Comments
It's indeed a very important move they did.
Glad you noticed it Ryan and that you shared your analysis with us.
Arkedo, Gameloft ... who's next ?
Posted by: K | April 9, 2010 1:27 PM
Wow. This is great news and good really change the market. I'm sure that they save a lot of time and development money avoiding the XBLA verification process. Does anyone know if the portion of the sale that goes to MS is different for Arcade and Indie games?
Posted by: MikeH | April 9, 2010 4:03 PM
It is not first time a big company brings game to XBLI. The first was Supercow from Nevosoft and CTXM.
Posted by: Bonner Bursche | April 9, 2010 11:51 PM
MikeH: No, the revenue split isn't the same. Indie games are a 70/30 split for developers. And from what I've heard Microsoft is taking a larger portion when it comes to XBLA (people aren't allowed to talk about that so I don't have any numbers). Although, indie games just doesn't sell. Too little exposure.
Posted by: Rod | April 11, 2010 12:22 PM
I agree that exposure is horrible for indie games. I wish they would put a little highlight of a couple of games on the dashboard just to give people an idea of what is out there. Also, and I probably fall into this group also, no achievements hurt a little too.
Posted by: MikeH | April 12, 2010 5:34 PM
I guess this is pretty much the nail in the coffin for further PSP development from Gameloft. They announced 5 Minis, but only delivered 2 (the last 4 months ago).
Anyway, saying they don't sell really isn't true, some (okay, one or two) have sold a couple hundred thousand. Which I think Gameloft would be happy with.
And to a certain extent, they don't need exposure (as much). They have people visiting their web site and people are familiar with their name from their iPhone games.
Posted by: JeremyR | April 13, 2010 7:24 AM
JeremyR: In general I don't think they sell. Of course, there's some exceptions. And yeah, Gameloft would probably be happy about selling a couple of hundred k's, although that is so extremely rare. Even for a major part of the XBLA-program its a rarity.
And with the non-existent bucks Microsoft is putting into marketing indie game you just can't expect any indie game to do that well. Of course, marketing (sending press releases and stuff) is up to the developers as well, and most of them don't (however when a game is featured on a gaming news site it always generate a couple of thousands in sale at minimum).
Yeah, sure, some developers do have a devoted fanbase, And thats fine and all, but thats usually such small numbers that its easily countable on fingers.
So they do need more exposure, and it would be cool if Microsoft did give them some spotlight. I bet most people don't even have a clue that XBLIG even exist.
Posted by: Rod | April 13, 2010 9:42 AM