GamerBytes study shows disappointing sales for XNA Community Games

by Griffin McElroy on Mar 30th 2009 4:30PM

Considering certain independent iPhone App developers have been making towering mountains of cash, you'd think that the financial status of the XNA Community Games market would be just as favorable. However, according to a recent report from GamerBytes, who dug up the sales figures of a number of XNA titles, this couldn't be further from the truth -- the combined sales total of the 24 titles they tracked was a mere 23,907 purchases, with an underwhelming conversion rate (ratio of people who purchase a game to total demo downloads) of just 7.1 percent.

Of course, with no impetus on the developers to reveal their financial data, the report is far from conclusive. When queried about their sales statistics, many of the developers gave rough estimates (or no answer at all), and a few of the service's "high-profile" titles, such as Colosseum and CarneyVale: Showtime, are completely unaccounted for. Take GamerBytes' conclusions with a few grains of salt, but based on their research, it certainly seems XNA Community Games have gotten off to a molasses-slow start.

Source

Tags: charts, gamerbytes, indie, microsoft, sales, Xbox-360, xbox-live, xna, xna-community-games, xna-creators-club

Reader Comments (64)

Those non-360 players may not care, but they should add achievements to these games. For a $2 game a lot of people will purchase them if at least 100 points are available to them.

achievements would make these sell like hotcakes!

I still don't get the obsession with these things (I have an Xbox 360). Why is something of greater value if it adds to a meaningless number? It's entirely pointless.

They give goals to achieve. It can help increase replay value, difficulty or just give you more things to do. I frankly don't get all the negativity towards them.. I could care less about how many points I have, but in general they're great.

Yeah, I don't understand this achievements obessession. It seems like it is a deal breaker for a lot of people regarding community games: no achievements, no purchase. How can a number that indicates nothing (only that you are playing to much videogames) be so important?

Guys, the fact is that many people enjoy getting the points for whatever reason, why does that chafe your ass so much? If they added the points more people would buy because they like the challenges that it puts on them. So, while you may be so great as to not care about the number of points, it's fun to others and would convert to sales.

Hell, I know I think "sweet" when I unexpectantly earn a trophy as well.

Yah, I actually dislike achievements/trophies, but like Duke said, achievements exist mainly because they add value (replayability for the most part) without much effort, they are easy to add and the developer doesn't really have to create an in game incentive/bonuses (I don't like this, but its the truth)

Now, I don't know much about XNA games, but is the ability to have achievements available?

And also, would the extra time put on the achievements bring more customers than the ones they already have?...

I don't even care if the achiements are worth points. Throw some 0 point achievements in there to add to replay value.

The current MS rule is that these games can't have achievement points. I would think that if they had even 1 it would get them more sales than they are getting now.

Achievement points are attractive to gamers for the same reason getting a high score in old arcade games was attractive: it's a goal to strive towards, thus adding replayability and an additional reward mechanic. I personally don't care about achievements, but I never really cared about score in arcade games either. It's an arbitrary system applied enmasse to all 360 games, excluding Community Games apparently.

I think achievements are very much like going to the gym.

Some people don't see the point in it when there's a perfectly good never used treadmill/clothes hanger at home and good tv on the hdtv.

Others are happy to run on the treadmill a couple times a week, maybe lift some light weights and help stay in shape.

If you don't do it, you probably don't understand why people go through all the effort. If you do, do it, you probably don't understand why more people don't got to the gym and feel the benefits of getting in better shape. However, both lifestyles are completely acceptable and lifestyle choices.

If someone wants those big 7000 gamer point biceps, let them pump that dead rising for all the achievements its worth.

none of them seem much fun, to me they look like flash games that you have to pay for.

I bet there are some good ones but i need something to spark the flame that is my intention of purchase, and none of them do that =\.

I only briefly looked through them once, but while in the "Popular" section there was not one but TWO "games" that turned your controller into a vibrating massager. There was also a fart "game".

...If there was ever greater evidence we shouldn't accept something just because it's popular.

Two fart games, actually. Two rumble massage "games." A 3D Aquarium, a Fireplace...

With all this crap hiding the good games, it's no wonder no one is buying.

I'm also turned off by the price. I played a demo of a game that I swear I could have made 10 years ago using Klik and Play, yet it cost 800 MS points!

Because microsoft does so much to promote community games.

From what I can tell, that's the problem.
The default "row" of icons on the XBox dashboard contains news for most big-name titles and DLC. Rarely have I seen anything about XNA Creator's Club games. Usually a generic message saying "Look over here! There's stuff that people made", and it's not really that appealing.

Add to that the fact that the Creator's Club content (and to a certain degree, many XBLA games) are hidden in impossible-to-navigate heavily nested menu structures.

Part of the success of iPhone app sales is the prominence of the App Store on the iPhone. It's an icon on the home screen! And paid, big name content is mixed in along with the little guts. Apple also keeps a "Top Paid / Top Free" games that are not divided among "Community Content" and "Regular Marketplace".

While I am a fan of the NXE dashboard, I think there are more steps needed to make the marketplace more prominent on the Xbox, and Community Games more prominent in general.

A lot of these titles are average, at best. It’s the kind of game you could play for free in your browser off of some flash site. Sorry XNA guys – you want me buying your stuff, you’re going to have to do better then what I’ve seen so far.

I haven't played any of them, but the game "covers" and blurbs make them sound like crap, so I have no interest in them whatsoever. Maybe there are some gems in there, but if so, they are hidden very well.

The sales are so low because most of the games suck! out of the 20 to 30 demos I've tried based on the cover art and screen shots, only 2 or 3 were good enough for me to even consider buying letalone play a second time.

Wtf is a xna community game? Not to be rude or anything but am I the only one that never heard of this stuff?

Yes you are.

Or perhaps browse your xbox dashboard a bit more. Go to Games -> Community Games.

Yeah some guy on the last thread said he can't even find the XNA stuff on the 360.

It's actually pretty damn easy to find, and I think I've seen an additional promotional bits for XNA on other parts of the menu before.

Its not available in all regions.

Until they talked about the XNA on last weeks 360 fancast, I had no idea it existed. The lack of marketing for it is incredible, or maybe it is like the creator of Samurai Dish Washer said; There is so much garbage on the XNA service, that it is impossible to know which games are worth the money.

I like what XNA stands for (it's basically Newgrounds for the console), but I dislike the implementation. Give people a way to rate content, because there is no way I'm spending money to be a guinea pig.

The problems are:

1. The vast majority of 360 owners probably don't know it even exists.
2. Because there are so many CRAP games, and a very ineffective way to find good ones, people who give it a shot can't find anything worth buying.
3. No Achievements.
4. I feel like my points should be going to "real" games, and I spend them on XBLA.

I'm sure a lot of WiiWare titles have the same problem.

You can't really compare WiiWare & XNA. Same qualitative difference as trying to compare XNA & XBLA.

However, they do suffer from the same lack of advertising.

I blame the legendarily terrible "box" art; I take one look and don't bother even trying the demo.

Call me shallow, but if you can't be assed to take any care in how your game is presented, then I'm not going to waste my bandwidth or money on you.

This somewhat jibes with research I had seen last year about how demos really don't sell games well compared to those without demos.

Here's a related post on the success of demos: http://www.unigamesity.com/debate-are-game-demos-game-killers/

I think the problems with community games are a) folks feel like the demo shows the problems with the game or is good enough, b) we're kinda saturated with games, especially if you own more than one console, and c) there's just not much talk about these games.

One problem is that good games so far have been picked off for full Live Arcade status. I know this doesn't account for everything, but it's a factor.

Pretty much have to agree with what has been said.. It's impossible to tell what's good and what's not. I don't care to download most of the games, because the few I have played have been pretty bad. The ones that are okay still aren't worth paying for.

The only two that have been really good so far have been Dishwasher Samurai and Jellycar, both of which were released before this system was implemented properly and both are being turned into proper XBLA games.

I think the big issues with XNA not being popular are two fold.
First, they are not easy to find and then when you do dig through the dashboard to find them you have no good way of knowing which ones people like.
I run XNAratings.com to help with that but it would be so much better if Microsoft would have a rating system where we can specify how much we like XNA games and then see other people's ratings.
There are a lot of crappy games on there but there are some real gems to like Miner Dig Deep, Blow, Biology Battle, and Carenvale Showtime

If the community games weren't just re-hashes of normal arcade games but crappier looking and not as fun then maybe it'd be worthwhile. As it stands now, you're better off just getting arcade games because they're far better and pretty much the same thing.

The lack of quality games is a real issue for community games. The reason it has no quality (or very little) is, unlike the iphone app store. It is totally open to the creator to publish on xbox live ,with on barriers of quality control. this may allow more unrecognized beginners to start to publish games. But the marketplace is getting very cluttered and hard to find those odd good games.
Although I'm not saying start quality checks for all games. if only we had a reviewing system much like itunes. we would be able to find those good games and give those other developers a standard to work towards.
@Miles
as for adding achievement, that would be a bad move. add would mess up the achievement system, by allowing people to buy games just for point to exploit the system. although Microsoft could possibly add a separate community score so people value the separate score less, or they could add achievement support but only for zero scoring ones

People already buy (or rent) games just for points. Whole communities exist around achievement whoring. I can get several hundred points with a single day of a rental, giving XNA games the same points that XBLA games would have next to no effect. I'm awed that anyone would propose that XNA games having achievements would somehow devalue achievement points as though they actually had any value to begin with.

The reason I love the cheevo points is because for me it adds replay value to the games I own. I loved going back to Fable II for this reason, Beautiful Katamari, others, etc.

The measly amount of points you'd give an XNA game would be pretty meaningless to a cheevo whore.

@markez
although you do make valid point, and i do agree that the achievement system is already getting abused. But many professional developers are trying to stamp out those very few games that have easy achievement, and follow the standard structure.
the problem with giving achievement access to community games is it will be extremely open for a random developer to put a very cheap game on the marketplace purely for one achievement (say for pressing the a button), and that would be all the games purpose is. Then many other developers may jump on the band wagon and start filling the market place with utter rubbish.

Sorry wrong person @vanuslux

Actually Community Games go through a Peer Review process before being allowed onto the service. Unfortunately, it's mostly to ensure the game is stable enough for release and to provide optional feedback regarding quality of the title. So there are barriers to entry, but it's more like a turnstile than a locked gate.

I'm an XBLA junkie and even I consistently forget that the XNA games even exist. It almost seems set up to fail, from the fact that they're kind of tucked away and Microsoft does little to make the general audience aware of them down to the fact that they're hamstrung by the lack of achievements (which a lot of people care about enough that they'd rather spend $5 for a mediocre XBLA game with achievements than a decent XNA game without them).

I completely agree. I'm a big fan of XBLA games but I've almost forgot that these XNA games even exist. They're hard to find, look unappealing, and are just not marketed at all. Microsoft could start by just merging them with the regular Arcade games, at least they'll have more visibility there.

My biggest gripe with XNA games is the inability to play when offline. That's one limitation that prevents me from purchasing *any* of them no matter how good they are.

As for the demos not selling games comment, I will say that there are many games that I have purchased after playing the demo that I otherwise would not have played. All those developers that are claiming that demos stop sales really don't take into account that their game is either too shallow or simply not fun and the demo gives that away.

The linked story also includes game like Halo 3 which had 800,000 people play the (beta) demo and still sold like hotcakes. I bet if you compare XBLA game sales (which must all have playable demos) to PNS sales (which do not all have demos) and WiiWare sales (which do not have demos) you'll find the XBLA sales much higher than the rest. There is a reason for this.

Now that the NXE takes away the auto-download new XBLA games, MS will be monitoring the attach rate for demo downloads vs purchased. Expect to see some interesting numbers.

I lowered the price of Easy Golf to 400 msp. Give it a try folks and tell me what you think. The demo is free and you can download it to your xbox from the web marketplace:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025855011c/

Community Games have received a bad reputation for being crap but give the game a try. It is highly competitive with "real" games on the XBLA so give it a spin.

You can find me in the Easy Golf forums or just send me an email if you have some long and detailed feedback.

matt.davis [at] barkerscrest.com

Haha, so that's what this friend of mine was talking about when he said the 360's Hot Shots.

For a 1-man team, it seems incredibly deep. Really wish had a 360 to support you.

If you don't mind me asking, like I mentioned before, is the option to add Achievements to XNA games available? if so, based on your game alone, do you find it worth it?

Noshino,

There is no way to add achievements to community games. Sorry.

There are not, and probably never will be any worthwhile community games.

Why?
1) Microsoft takes 60% of the profit off of them. Which I'd figure is going to be offputting to any serious developer.
2) Any "really good" game is going to be snapped up by MS, and sold at 800/1200 Points.

Otis... you are wrong on both counts... Microsoft takes 30% of most of the games. If they give you extra marketing then thay can take UPTO 60%.

There's been no CG snapped up for promotion to XBLA. A couple DreamBuild Play competition winners have gone that way, but that was the intended prize.

60% isn't exactly bad though, especially for an independant developer. If nothing else, at least if you make a good game you're getting your work out there, and if it's good enough to get picked up by MS, all the better.

Breaking into the games industry is extremely difficult, I think this is a great oppertunity.. if you have enough skill to actually do something worthwhile.

I think MS takes 30% not 60%.

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GamerBytes study shows disappointing sales for XNA Community Games

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