GameDaily BIZ got some details on the revenue sharing structure of the recently detailed Xbox Live Community Games. While we reported that developers could receive "up to 70%" of sales, Microsoft's Chris Satchell clarified the structure this way: "The better you're doing, the more we'll take." Sure, this sounds pretty cutthroat (newsflash: Microsoft is a business!) but the relationship here isn't dissimilar to traditional retail arrangements.

If your Community Game performs well, it will be plucked from the crowd and placed in the "storefront" where it should enjoy a great deal of promotion and, in turn, sales. Satchell says, "The game will spend most of its time at 70%, but if we're promoting you and you're getting more traffic, there will be a 10% to 30% marketing fee." Once it's out of the storefront – bam! – "you're back to 70% again." In other words, if you want more of your hard-earned ... uh, Microsoft Points to go to Bobby Developer and not Johnny Microsoft, wait until things have settled down a bit and the game has left the storefront for the relative anonymity of the crowd. Then, swoop in, make your purchase, and consider The Man stuck.

Following the official unveiling of the Xbox Live Community Games channel, we had the opportunity to speak with Boyd Multerer, general manager of XNA at Microsoft, about the initiative. We've assembled our questions and his answers into the eminently readable Q&A format, below, where we cover everything from cost to availability of trials to file size limitations to release scheduling to delisting to achievements and more. Read on!

How many games will be available on the service at launch?
It's "a different type of game in a different channel," Multerer told us. Since "nobody has ever done this before ... there's very little data to go on." In the first few weeks of the beta, over 100 games were submitted and over 60 games were passed through the peer certification, if that's any indication. In other words: You'll just have to wait for any kind of specific number, but you can probably assume several dozen games would be in the service on day one.

Will games still be able to graduate from Xbox Live Community Game to full-blown Xbox Live Arcade title?
"Yes," Multerer told us. "In fact, I hope to see more of it. Community Games is like the minor leaugues in baseball" where young talents can show off what they've got before making the jump to the majors. This wasn't the last time Multerer used the baseball metaphor.

How much will Xbox Live Community Games cost? How large will the files be?
Either 200, 400, or 800 Microsoft Points (that breaks down to roughly $2.50 to $10). The 200 point games will be limited to 50MB downloads, while the 400 or 800 point games will be limited to 150MB.

Will there be any free Xbox Live Community Games?
Nope. Multerer said that if a creator wanted to share his game for free with friends and family, he can send it to their Windows machine for free, "no problem." However, in "opening up that platform to a new market, [Microsoft] needs to prove that [they] can sell things on it." He did want to point out, though, that because they're not offering free games now, that "doesn't mean [they] won't ever look at making that happen."

Microsoft confirmed today that the final phase of its XNA initiative would commence later this year when the "Community Games" channel is added to the Xbox Live Marketplace in the US, Canada and select European markets (other regions will be included in 2009 and "beyond"). User-created games will be sold at three price levels: 200 Microsoft Points ($2.50), 400 Microsoft Points ($5) and 800 Microsoft Points ($10). Microsoft has committed to share up to 70% of revenue of an indie game with its developer. (In addition, we're presuming that some games will be offered for free. Actually, no games will be free -- read our full Q&A with XNA GM Boyd Multerer right here!)

No pressure or anything, but you're the future of Xbox Live Arcade, 'kay? In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Microsoft's worldwide Xbox Live Arcade games portfolio manager, David Edery, states that user-created games are "going to help [Microsoft] leapfrog the competition" -- said competition being PlayStation Network and WiiWare. Edery also questions whether Sony or Nintendo will ever attempt to emulate Microsoft's initiative.

Revealed at GDC 2008, Microsoft's Community Games Initiative is set to launch later this year and will allow indie devs to submit games created using XNA Game Studio 2.0 for other Community members to review. The top-rated submissions will be made available via XBLA for all users to download.

Some other interesting tidbits from the Edry interview: MS is planning to increase the maximum file size for future XBLA releases from 150 megabytes to 350MB, although he wouldn't divulge when. (MS had already made an exception for Capcom's upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, affording it 250MB for all its high-res 2D goodness.) Edery also confirms that MS has a "large" number of upcoming XBLA releases in its queue, and may consider more multi-release XBLA Wednesdays as a result.

Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks alternate in contributing Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:

Gamers were outraged in recent weeks by a rumor that Xbox Live Arcade royalties were being cut in half for developers; in fact, some developers were reportedly considering moving development from XBLA to the PlayStation Network because of the cuts. It was less clear why Microsoft would do something like this: At first glance, it appears to stifle independent game development and reduce the overall quality of XBLA as a platform. Clearly, Microsoft is just being greedy, right?

Perhaps, but it's certainly not as clearcut as it seems at first glance. Although any changes to the royalty structure will mean changes -- and potentially significant ones -- for XBLA, they may still be beneficial in the long run for some people, possibly even increasing indie development.

As is often the case with rumors, there's more to the story than a simple royalty cut. Let's think first about what the costs and benefits of the changes are to both developers and Microsoft, after which we can decide why the action might have been taken in the first place and what it all means to us as gamers. From a developer's perspective, the cost is pretty clear: Up to 35% of the total revenues of a game. Does the developer receive any benefits? Yes, some: As reported, developers will no longer have to pay for features like worldwide ratings or localization, which both reduces costs and potentially provides access to a larger international market. And from Microsoft's standpoint, the costs and benefits are essentially reversed: It no longer has to pay the royalties, but it does need to provide some additional services.

Yesterday's announcement of XNA Community Games was exciting, but it wasn't exactly heavy on answers. Today we sat with a breakfast table full of Microsoft bigwigs and pummeled them until they gave us the information we crave, no matter how many pleas for mercy they offered up. ... Well, we pummeled them with questions. ... And what they offered up was delicious bacon, not pleas for mercy.

Check out what we learned after the jump.

Aspiring game developers using Microsoft's free-to-use XNA development toolkit will be happy to know than an upgraded version, Game Studio 2.0, will be released early tomorrow, December 13. The new version sports a reported fifteen new features, among them online play through Microsoft's LIVE system.

According to the press release, "The new version ... includes the ability to create online, cross-platform multiplayer games for Xbox 360 and Windows using Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows - LIVE, respectively." We think that means cross-platforms games and multiplayer games, not cross-platform play for Xbox 360 owners wanting to duke it out with their Windows cohorts - sorry, folks, go ahead and add that to your wishlist of Studio 3.0 features. Matchmaking features, however, are integrated.

XNA Game Studio 2.0 "fully supports game development with all versions of the Microsoft Visual Studio product line." View the entire list of new features here.

It seems as if everyone wants in on the gaming scene these days: jocks, cheerleaders, your mom. Even Apple wants a slice of the pie. But not Microsoft's J Allard, and in a recent interview the former Xbox zealot and current Zune front man shared his thoughts on why he feels Zune owners shouldn't expect to be playing Bejeweled or Pac-Man on Microsoft's iPod rival anytime soon. Granted he still has a full nine months to change his mind.

Microsoft previously toyed with the idea of releasing games on the portable, though with a new line of Zune devices hitting retail shelves this week, Allard addressed his particular concerns with bringing games to the Zune format, specifically surrounding customer satisfaction and portability of purchased games as hardware advances from one generation to the next. While Microsoft's move into the portable gaming space has been long awaited, we agree that it's good that Allard is voicing these sorts of concerns up front, rather than carelessly jumping into portable gaming sight unseen.

Still, the executive managed to leave the door open for Zune gaming by praising what Microsoft has managed to pull off in getting its XNA development platform to work with a variety of different types of hardware, though, Allard adds, "the Zune isn't playing Halo 3 anytime soon." Good thing, Allard my boy, since the idea of getting teabagged on the commute home is enough to ruin anyone's day.

You may remember Schizoid as the first game set to officially make the jump from the XNA platform to the Xbox Live Arcade. Now, a snippet of video has emerged to help you put some gameplay to a name, as it were. Just because we've seen the game now though doesn't mean we're any closer to understanding it.

It's a puzzle, really. We were all ready to dismiss it as just another multi-directional shooter until we noticed that there's no actual shooting. It appears that red and blue Spider-Man chest emblems are trying to destroy similarly-colored lobsters by tackling them to death. Ah well, thank goodness for demos.

A pair of budding developers, one from Ontario and another from New York, has tied for top honors in Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play contest, an effort to encourage indie game makers to get on board the XNA platform. Canadian John "Ain't No Fluke" Flook and American James Silva each pocketed $10,000 and were offered Xbox Live Arcade publishing contracts for their respective entries: Blazing Birds, a robotic game of badminton origins, and The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, a morbid tale of "mayhem and revenge" (pictured above).

In a remarkable display of generosity, Microsoft extended XBLA contracts to two additional contestants, Steve Olofsson of Sweden, for Gravitron Ultra, and Daniel McGuire of the UK, for Yo Ho Kablammo!, along with $5,000 (to each) and some swag. Sixteen additional finalists have been honored (in mention) over on the official contest page and could potentially be called to service if the XBLA pipeline runs dry. In all, 4,500 creations were creators entered into the competition, submitting roughly 200 projects.

Like Superman and Batman trading capes, or Aquaman borrowing Wonder Woman's uh ... invisible plane, EA and Microsoft have been awfully chummy lately. First, Xbox exec Peter Moore leaves Microsoft to be closer to his family in San Francisco ... and take a lucrative position at EA Sports. Of course, he was replaced with former EA exec Don Mattrick, ensuring the carefully balanced game of corporate Jenga wouldn't come crashing down.

Today, Microsoft announced that EA executive vice president John Schappert has joined the company in the newly created position of "corporate vice president of LIVE, software and services." The one-time founder of Madden-dev Tiburon will oversee Xbox Live as well as Games for Windows Live, XNA and Microsoft Casual Games, which includes Xbox Live Arcade. He'll be reporting directly to his old EA compatriot – you guessed it – Don Mattrick. We imagine their meetings will involve reminiscing about that time they did that thing at that one group team building exercise in '99 and various ways they could spell Microsoft with a consecutive 'e' and an 'a.' Good times, good times.

Now, to complete the circle, Xbox will need to sacrifice one of their own to EA! Let the ritual commence ...