Team 17: XBLA publishing is much harder now

by Alexander Sliwinski { Jul 15th 2009 at 7:00PM }

Team 17's Martyn Brown believes the barriers to self-publishing on Xbox Live Arcade are becoming more difficult to break through. The studio director tells GI.biz that it's "massively" harder to get games on XBLA now, saying that there just aren't "many gaps in the portfolio" and the top sellers are mostly established IPs -- like his company's Worms games.

Brown believes that new developers without established connections need to make titles that cater to the platforms. He expresses that Sony "tends to like the new stuff" that isn't necessarily mass market, while with Microsoft "you're really going for the commercial mass market audience." The takeaway from this is that as digital distribution goes from being the new frontier to becoming the norm, it's going to have similar issues as current brick-and-mortar retailers.

Tags: barriers, business, development, martyn-brown, team-17, worms, xbla

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Ian @ Jul 15th 2009 12:49PM

"The takeaway from this is that as digital distribution goes from being the new frontier to becoming the norm, it's going to have similar issues as current brick-and-mortar retailers."

... At least on XBLA. While PSN has its fair share of downloadable content for the mass market, Sony definitely appears infinitely more apt and willing to take on more chances than its competitor (when it comes to their respective marketplaces, not overall. The latter is debatable).

That's not to discredit XBLA for its appeal to the retro and nostalgia in all of us, but I think that approach only goes but so far for some gamers.

The Dark Wang @ Jul 15th 2009 7:15PM

Sony has taken the most chances this gen with everything from the games to the price of the ps3. Their biggest franchise (God of War) hasn't even appeared on ps3 yet. So I would say overall they've taken the most chances.

DeathroW @ Jul 16th 2009 8:36AM

God of war isn't their biggest franchise.. :|

Gran turismo outsells it by over 5 - 1.

zero2dash @ Jul 15th 2009 1:02PM

Having PixelJunk and That Game Company are definitely feathers in Sony's cap (and lend credibility to what he's saying).

Microsoft seems more quantity over quality with XBLA; Sony seems more the opposite. Note that I'm not saying one way or the other that everything on XBLA = garbage because there are plenty of good titles (and likewise, having The Behemoth is a feather in Microsoft's camp). That being said - there's a lot less filler on the PSN than there is on XBLA.

zero2dash @ Jul 15th 2009 1:05PM

(adding)
It also helps that Sony doesn't have "requirements" in place like it appears Microsoft does.

I know Live is their service, but they need to be a little more open when it comes to developers trying to do something on Live. If there's one facet Microsoft needs to take note of what Sony does, it's definitely in that area. Seems like Sony basically lets the developers do whatever they want - even if they want to release DLC for free.

Sly @ Jul 15th 2009 7:24PM

and sony actually helps budding developers put their work on the PSN with that fund that they made. and burn zombie burn which came from that is really good from what i heard (gotta pick it up later).

bkmulder @ Jul 15th 2009 8:48PM

I'm not sure that PSN has better quality overall. I like Eden and Flower (Flower especially), but they're no better (or worse!) than the best XBLA has to offer, such as Braid, Geometry Wars, Catan, Pac-Man Championship edition, Castle Crashers, etc.

XBLA is just bigger. That means more awesome, must-have games, but also more total garbage.

Captain Planet @ Jul 15th 2009 7:05PM

I'm thankful Microsoft's XBL publishing policy/approval is strict. If it wasn't it would be similar to Apple's [cr]App Store.

Maverick Saturn (Igor) @ Jul 15th 2009 7:37PM

But not so strict it turns away new developers, the thing with PSN is that like XBLA it too has an array of classics and new games to look forward to, which is great, but the point he stresses is that for new developers, its a hassle, something that Sony and PSN is working on, there IS a level of quality on PSN with new titles like there is with many XBLA games. So to be honest, while they shouldn't drop to App store levels, they should still allow space for new devs to pop in and make cash.

PR0F3TA @ Jul 15th 2009 11:02PM

and i'm glad Sony took chances... or there would be no LBP

Titchard @ Jul 15th 2009 7:11PM

While I imagine it is a problem that new and upcoming games are not making it through because of this difficulty I imagine it is hard to draw the line in the sand for what gets through and doesn't - I mean look at the iTunes apps and the community games, for every awesome app/game there are dozens of trashy apps.

Mr Khan @ Jul 15th 2009 7:09PM

As long as you can find your audience, what does it matter? Make the right game, and people will come.

maveric101 @ Jul 16th 2009 12:33AM

"As long as you can find your audience"

that's exactly the problem he stated. it's becoming harder to even get people to see your game, let alone buy it. it's not an impossible problem to fix, though. MS could put another category in the games section for "most under appreciated" games (but worded more nicely).

Rhamsey @ Jul 15th 2009 7:13PM

didn't i read this earlier today?

Maverick Saturn (Igor) @ Jul 15th 2009 7:37PM

Self publishing is great, it just means more novice developers can get thier game noticed, and of course get help from other developers, the reason this is great is because it for us its a chance to relive the days when devs felt free and open to making silly games like Speed Freaks, Ninja and other silly games that I enjoyed as a kid, most mainstream games are taken to seriously because they cost too much, theres no space for silly colourful arcady games like 'bugs bunny's big adventure'.

I for one am all for freedom and quality combined.

Andrew @ Jul 15th 2009 7:45PM

Xbox does a self-publishing system. It's the Community Games (rename to Indie Games) system. http://creators.xna.com/ has more info about it.

deanb @ Jul 15th 2009 7:59PM

And there has been many articles showing that they get bugger all back on their return and even the most successful games pale in comparison and fail to really pick up. They ussualy have %5 or less folks get the demo buy the full game.

modified @ Jul 15th 2009 8:08PM

I would imagine Microsoft gets more of the sales from those games than they do arcade games.

Andrew @ Jul 15th 2009 8:09PM

Do you think that's because of the system? or because the quality of games?

Luthyr @ Jul 15th 2009 8:53PM

The problem with Xbox Indie games is certainly a combination of both the system and quality of games. There are (a few) really good games on there like Carneyvale Showtime. I hope with the revamp this fall that it is easier to pick out the quality games.

Emophia @ Jul 15th 2009 7:58PM

What about Brown and Yellow people? How racist.

jynxycat @ Jul 15th 2009 8:32PM

Publishing sure is hard, especially getting your games onto XBLA without horrid bugs everywhere.

Looking at you, Team 17.

dronesensor @ Jul 15th 2009 9:22PM

Seriously. Worms 2 is great fun, but it's a disaster. Half the time, I can't join my friends' games, Avatars occasionally get stuck onscreen from the lobby, and it's even frozen my XBox several times. It's a shame, because it's such a huge improvement over the lackluster previous version. This game needs to be patched as soon as possible.

arisc2 @ Jul 15th 2009 10:26PM

not to mention selling the same worm.... i mean game for 20 years....
yeah im looking at you too team 17.

Tom @ Jul 15th 2009 10:41PM

Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. I find it difficult to take them seriously on this issue considering they can't get a turn based 2D game to run smoothly over Xbox Live.

Ryan @ Jul 15th 2009 9:26PM

Good, 90% of the games on XBLA suck donkey balls anyway.

Bradwart @ Jul 16th 2009 1:37AM

Fat Princess FTW

fezmid @ Jul 16th 2009 8:50AM

I think one of the biggest problems is that MS removed the "automatically download new stuff from XBLA" feature. I used to at least preview 80% of the things that were downloaded. I probably never would've found Catan or Carcasonne on my own. But since they automatically downloaded, I tried them out and love them.

With the NXE, they removed that feature - and I think I've only purchased a couple of XBLA games since.

Larry @ Jul 16th 2009 11:55AM

I think some of you missed the point of the article. Microsoft making it harder for indies to develop games is only because it is becoming more and more like the PSN. Where only a handfull of hand picked games get in instead of the dozens of indie developed games getting in.