
Xbox Live Indie Games: no way to make a living - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/07/xblig-feature.ars
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Impossible
Pretty standard set of complaints about the service. The thing is, most people
that can only get on XBLIG are just not making very good games (either in
terms of gameplay, production values or general appeal), so sales wouldn't be
much higher if they were on XBLA. They might actually be lower because the
developers wouldn't be able to benefit from press about struggling on XBLIG
:). Make a game that is good enough to get approved for XBLA, PSN or can get
nominated in IGF and instead choose to release on XBLIG and the go and
complain about the quality of the service hurting your sales.

Achievements would probably lead to higher sales, but I can't think of a
system that wouldn't be abused. The worst case, which can be culled by the
XBLIG peer review system, is a bunch of "press A to get 50 points!" games for
$0.99. Those games are pretty easily blocked, but XBLIG does have a lot of
weird joke games and weird non-game apps. It's hard to draw the line between
supporting these types of games and deciding what a fair amount of challenge
for an achievement is.

