Brent

I don't think you can share the maps you create for the golf game with your friends, or can you?

It looks like I'm a little late to comment but . . .

I make downloadable console games and I think the 50m restriction is reasonable for now.

The size of a game can effect the end user the following areas:

Download times
Load Times
Storage Space
Game Performance (Frame rate and smooth game play)

Without limits, developers might not work hard to get the size down. There are many things that can reduce the size of a game without the end user even noticing a difference. I would suggest that many developers might not take the extra time to weed out the unnecessary size if a limit was not imposed. The end user pays because they wait longer to download, they wait longer for the game to load and they have less room on their hard dive for other games. I don’t care how big your hard drive is or how patient you are for a download, if you could get the same thing (or nearly the same thing) smaller and faster wouldn’t that be better? If your games are 10X as big your hard drive needs to be 10X as big to hold the same number of games.

Is Blast Factor a Better game than Geometry Wars or Mutant Storm BECAUSE it is so much bigger? Could it have been half the size without really effecting the quality of the game?

Obviously the 50M size limit does limit the end result and there are some cases that a better game could be made with more space but, at the moment, the budget sizes of these games are a much bigger restriction. You don’t get downloadable games that are Halo quality not because of the size limit but more because of the budget limit. What you get is creative games and not just bad halo clones. This is a great example of budget restrictions resulting in innovation and great $5-$15 games.

I believe that the future IS in downloadable games and eventually you will be downloading AAA titles but even then size will still be an issue (even if the limit is 2G instead of 50M). Techniques we have learned along the way will help those games be better. Limits will cause innovation.

This article never stated that the 50M limit was always a benefit. It just said that sometimes it might be good. I guarantee that this is the case.

Here is a web site devoted to "Indie" games.

http://www.gametunnel.com

I worked on Outpost Kaloki X for Xbox Live Arcade. (This game was mentioned previously in this post) I would love to explain why we consider this an indie game . . .

We are a small game developer that has done a handful of contract games for publishers. We came up with a game idea for a space station tycoon game on a console. We pitched it to a lot of publishers. Many publishers liked what they saw but were not willing to risk a full console budget on a console tycoon game. Most console tycoon games in the past have been converted from PC versions and have not sold well.

We decided to wrap up our demo and release it as a PC downloadable game on our website www.Ninjabee.com . We aren't good marketers, we make games, so although it won awards, we didn't make back the money we spent on it.

We got in touch with Microsoft, they believed in us and allowed us to make our game for the 360, as we originally envisioned. They gave us the opportunity but we paid for it. We found friends with money, took out a loan and made the game ourselves. We took a Huge risk on an idea that was just far enough out of the mainstream that it was hard to find a publisher.

If you pay for it yourself and are able to make a game that otherwise might not get done, then that is the beauty of independent games!

Because of the success of Live Arcade, I believe everyone will begin to pay more attention to these indie developers. Microsoft has been great! This doesn't mean they will be able to allow every guy in his basement the opportunity to make a Live Arcade game. There is still a big barrier to entry that may frustrate many indie developers. You need to prove you are capable before you can make the game. Because Microsft is still going to support the "indie" developer, even when they could give allow the big publisher to take over now that everyone knows you can make money on Live Arcade, we will all benefit!