

Indie Game Developer Finds Success On Xbox 360 -- Est. $825K Sales In First Week - vascoos01
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/indie-game-developer-finds-success-on-xbox-360-est-825k-sales-in-first-week

======
iigs
article:

 _At $15 per game, that’s $825,000 in first week gross sales. Microsoft takes
a cut -- we don't know how much -- but that's still a really impressive
debut._

comment:

 _I think Microsoft takes a 33% cut._

article:

 _Jonathan said that with his projected sales (which he didn’t break out), he
should be able to make game developing a full-time gig._

For half a million (post-MS but pre-IRS) dollars I'd consider quitting my day
job and giving it, oh, say _five years_ of a shot.

~~~
pkaler
The answer is, that it depends. Revenue split used to be 60/40, with 60% going
to the developer.

Depending on when Jonathan Blow signed his deal, he may be getting as high as
60% or as low as 30%.

I blogged about the issue here: [http://parveenkaler.com/2008/03/08/iphone-
app-store-revenue-...](http://parveenkaler.com/2008/03/08/iphone-app-store-
revenue-split/)

~~~
iigs
Wow, that's horrible. I would really feel slapped in the face if I had spent
the time to learn XBox360 development and they shifted the royalties across
the 50% boundary.

70/30 seems entirely fair, 60/40 feels like the pain point to me, and less
than 50/50 seems like they should be giving me health insurance.

What a great example of why carrier "portals" never have content you want on
them. Hopefully Apple's honest and open approach to licensing really raises
the bar for everyone else.

------
DarkShikari
Many have feared recently that smaller game developers would be pushed out of
the business; clearly, with better and better graphics expected out of games
and development costs shooting through the roof, they wouldn't have a chance,
would they?

But the irony of it all is that the exact opposite seems to be happening: sick
of complicated, high-budget, high-price yet often low-quality games, gamers
are looking for simpler but more innovative and interesting games to hold
their attention.

This is even happening in the non-indie scene; look how wildly popular Portal
was, despite the fact that it was a 5-hour $20 game made by the small team
behind Narbacular Drop, with some extra resources from Valve. If anything, its
release far overshadowed the higher-profile and higher-budget Half-Life
Episode 2.

Of course, the biggest chance for indie developers to make their debut is in
genres that are classically inexpensive to develop games for: strategy games,
adventure games, old-fashioned RPGs, shooters, etc. One example of this is the
wildly popular (at least in Japan) Touhou shmup series; a total of 7 PC
shooter games (plus the 5 older PC-98 games) all made by a _single developer,
despite the fact that he has a day job, too_. The games are so successful that
there's an entire convention each year dedicated solely to products related to
his games--and yet despite the success, the only ones involved in production
are that single developer and his many, many beers.

Xbox Live Arcade is a perfect ground for promoting such games; if you put a
low-priced game that looks interesting in front of the eyes of tens of
millions of people with points to spend, you're sure to get loads of sales.

~~~
utnick
I wonder how much time and money he spent developing Braid.

The art and music is very good. Probably not cheap.

~~~
anotherjesse
He has been working on it for a long time. (from at least 2006).

Jeff Lindsay (who was one of the founders of Super Happy Dev House - and
DevJavu) has been raving about it for about that long and is such a fan of
indie games he (and friends) is creating a site to catalog them -
<http://db.tigsource.com/games/braid>

~~~
anotherjesse
More details: <http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entries2006.php?entry_id=59> -

In 2006 when braid won the Independent Game Festival prize for innovation it
said they it was 8 months of dev time.

------
s3graham
Live Arcade is typically 70/30 (70 for developer), but it's negotiated on a
case-by-case basis. Hope he got more!

Note that this isn't a "crap-out-a-game-make-a-mil"; he was working on this
game for, I believe, 5-ish years.

(worth buying and playing, btw)

~~~
pkaler
The 70% cut is a very, very special case.

~~~
snprbob86
70/30 is the default case for the upcoming Xbox LIVE Community Games:
<http://creators.xna.com/en-us/XboxLIVECommunityGames>

Microsoft only takes more than 30% if you are lucky enough to have your game
featured (read: you'll make it all back and more in volume).

Disclaimer: I work on Game Studio and the XNA Framework

------
LogicHoleFlaw
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_>(video_game) has a basic description of
the game itself.

<http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3169204> and
<http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/braid/review.html> are some good
reviews of the game.

For my part, I'll be playing it this weekend.

~~~
dmix
I played the trial on my Xbox this morning. It's a very well designed game.
It's like Shrek in the way that it takes old archetypes and applies in a new
and interesting way.

The score and visuals are what sold me though.

------
dmix
And now the VCs come calling.

