Yak quoted in Escapist article- Microsoft cert is crap

[Flabio]

My point was not the lack of need for money, but that it didnt have to come from a publisher. We might get speculative game investors, other games firms, or even some sort of "Game Futures" share-system.

Other funding avenues exist, but you might be surprised just how averse to backing games companies the city actually is right now. As it stands, the publishers and platform holders are the only ones willing to pay for game development. It's just too difficult to pitch a guarenteed return on investment to a VC.

I don't doubt it's going to change in the future. I just don't think that future is as close as articles like this want.

[RiK]

mr X of the road" has NO FUCKING CLUE about what XBLA is and what it can do for him/her

Unfortunately, I think this is definitely the case. All my non-geek friends who have a 360 play Gears of War, PGR and Halo 3. Precious little else. They play these games often, and have no qualms with going on LIVE to play them, but when it comes to XBLA, they don't bother because the general opinion is that it's just full of 'shitty older game remakes'.

I am unaware of any attempt by Microsoft to increase the profile of this market to anyone other than those who live on the internets.

Maybe they need to stick some high profile advertising in the packs with the AAA titles?

Sadly, most people just don't *know* about the benefits of getting their consoles online, and even if they are aware, many just assume it's only applicable to the hardcore FPS guys.

I've got several mates around here who purely treat there 360 like a last-gen box. They've never taken it online, they just play boxed games. A couple of them barely know their way around the dashboard, they don't care as long as the game launched when they stick it in the drive.

One of my students thought it was like the second coming a couple of weeks ago when I showed him all the downloads I had stored on my Elite, about 40 full game demos and 80 XBLA titles (including a dozen of so full versions). He went out that afternoon and replaced his USB modem with a proper router and we've hardly seen him since.

I've also spoken to several people who were unaware of the stuff available to the basic free XBL membership and were put off as they assumed you have to pay for a gold sub to do anything worthwhile.

[korruptor]

Yeah, the dashboard does seem to confuse people. I thought it was quite good initially, but seeing how much it confused Con and K was an eye-opener. It's not obvious how to change profile or navigate it at all, really.

[hyphz]

My point was not the lack of need for money, but that it didnt have to come from a publisher. We might get speculative game investors, other games firms, or even some sort of "Game Futures" share-system.

But the problem is that these would wind up having exactly the same rules that publishers do. They would want to know as surely as possible that they would get their money back so they would be reluctant to finance original games, etc.

[Dio]

Why? Because the contemporary middleman is slowly but surely slipping into irrelevance.

absofuckinlutely.

Long term I dont see publishers so much as "investors".

I substantially disagree. Good 'Independent' games will tend to fail to attract significant marketshare if they attempt to do their own marketing, advertising and PR.

Products simply can't stand alone; you need to have particular skills to tease product - particularly if it is original IP or conceptually different - into the marketplace. In general, games houses will not have these skills, and there's a significant chance that the better and more focused the developers are on the quality of their game, the worse they will be at marketing.

A large developer can afford their own sales & marketing department, but then will tend to be less likely to offer original IP.

[gilesgoat]

My point was not the lack of need for money, but that it didnt have to come from a publisher. We might get speculative game investors, other games firms, or even some sort of "Game Futures" share-system.

But the problem is that these would wind up having exactly the same rules that publishers do. They would want to know as surely as possible that they would get their money back so they would be reluctant to finance original games, etc.

My take is that "EVERYTHING IS UNPREDICTABLE", you can't really say
or wish to say "from this job we'll get X" ..

You don't know, it does not matter what you do .. it could work it could work less.

But I am also convinced that unless what you do is totally and really crap
then it should even not be possible to get it THAT wrong.

The experience that I saw seems to tell that maybe the most important
thing is how you present something and this in a way, if someone is
organized to do that, should be a kind of cost "independent" of what you are going to present.

It could be a fridge, it could be a piece of paper, it could be the next game .. it does not matter ..

"A good seller has to be able to sell anything and generate people's interest in it".

Sure, maybe it could interest the 0.00001% of people .. but so what ?

If you really can "hit" many people at once even that 0.00001% could
be very worth doing.

So where's the problem again ? Small numbers, poor knowledge, poor promotion, limited visibility, limited accessibility of the stuff.

This is why the retail still is above everything .. ANYONE can go in a store
see touch and get it with just cash in the pockets.

Let's not even mention TV adverts and such.

The problem of all those new medias is that they still have limited visibility
and accessibility IMHO, it may look "but potentially there are millions" but
the reality I think it's much smaller and lot more different.

Just the idea "everyone has a credit card" is really false, the idea of
"anyone can buy on the internet" is even more false and the idea that
"anyone can get to know" is false again.

It does not work really like that, it works for a minority yet.

I think we are simply facing "the old usual problem" with the difference
that today we think "but potentially it should not be like that" ..
except that .. the problem is still like that.

It's not "not working" it's "not working THAT fine yet".

Then there's also in this case maybe an "exclusion problem" that does
not help ..

Yes you can buy "cool games" on XBLA *BUT* you can't really download
and but the same ( it's not practical ) the SAME game you get on
DVD and you stick inside your console.

So how can you "divert" people from stores/retail or make them understand
"you can get the same quality" somewhere else ?

A LOT of work about "information and teaching" is necessary, one thing
I think it's really sure "this does not happen by magic just because
something exists and works".

If we just wait for this to happen .. we have time to get well old and yet
have to seen big results

[Dave]

Xbox LIVE Arcade has been a huge hit on Xbox 360, with nearly 70% of all connected consoles downloading and playing Xbox LIVE Arcade titles.

They have a promo in the dashboard, released today, indicating that. Turn on your 360, go to the marketplace blade, and you'll see.

So, 70% of people who've plugged their 360 into the internet are aware of XBLA, and have used it at least once (to download a XBLA demo, at the very least).

8,000,000+ people use Xbox Live in one way or another (they're online).

Lots of other neat stats on there.

[gilesgoat]

Xbox LIVE Arcade has been a huge hit on Xbox 360, with nearly 70% of all connected consoles downloading and playing Xbox LIVE Arcade titles.

They have a promo in the dashboard, released today, indicating that. Turn on your 360, go to the marketplace blade, and you'll see.

So, 70% of people who've plugged their 360 into the internet are aware of XBLA, and have used it at least once (to download a XBLA demo, at the very least).

8,000,000+ people use Xbox Live in one way or another (they're online).

Lots of other neat stats on there.

It still does not explain well some figures.

8,000,000 people, 70% of it = 5,600,000

let's take the 1% rule, 1% of people buys what they downloaded as demo

so we have 56,000 people ..

But .. from what I see in other places .. it looks like the "average good"
are games selling around 30 .. 40k units over a span of 2 years
this means that on average just the 0.375% .. 0.5% of XBLA users buys something
over a span of 2 years ?

56 K pounds, if they would be pounds ( let's not forget we are more
talking about dollars here not pounds/euro ) would be a figure ..

Yet we are talking about a 2 years span that means about 25K year
that if you begin to split into 2 .. 3 .. 4 .. or more you see what you get.

From all that you have to subtract all the costs you sustained to develop
the thing, that "just" to bring it there into XBLA are far than zero already
the rating that is an unavoidable step costs quite a bit.

One of the "problems" is really the slowness of those curves, meanwhile
you have to develop more and you have to get the money to develop more.

So basically means you have to push titles out one after the other to
fill the "pipeline" because your immediate return is more what you get
"in the flash moment" that is very short and quite small.

So is it worth ?

Hmmm ...

It's a bit complex to handle certainly ...

[Dave]

I'm not sure, really. There's this on Wikipedia with press-release sales data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBLA#Sales_and_milestones

Their figure is old. 600,000 games purchased with 3 million downloads, circa March 2006. There were less 360 owners then, and less content to chose from. Now they're saying 25 million demo downloads. There are 100 XBLA games on there at the moment, so that averages 250,000 downloads per game.


http://xbox360.gamespy.com/articles/697/697667p1.html

(The most successful game on Xbox Live Arcade has a 39% conversion rate, meaning 4 out of every ten people who try the demo buy it. In comparison, PC game downloads average around 1.5% conversion.) These numbers are a little misleading because Xbox Live Arcade is so new, but they still show that the Xbox Live model works.

My "hunch" is that conversion rate number is lower now. It's probably around 20% for the best selling games, if that. $500,000 is what it would have netted, using MUCH guesswork to get that number ([250,000 * 0.20] * $10).

The thing is, if you look at the averages, I think you're spot on. It doesn't look like it can be lucrative. The best selling games are probably netting several hundred thousand dollars (priced at $10/ea). Others are struggling to crack the $100,000 mark. Maybe there's one or two pushing close to $1 million by now.

You can kind of get an idea of sales figures by looking at high-score lists. Each player on there played a purchased copy of the game. You'll get duplicates because if a friend comes over and signs in with their Gamertag on your 360, and has a go, their name is getting put on that list, even though they didn't buy it. That probably doesn't happen a ton, but it does, and it skews the numbers.

It sounds a lot like the retail game market to me. Some games sell really well, but the vast majority don't pull profit. That's probably going to happen in XBLA as the amount of content continues to increase.

What gets a game up at the top? It's either good, or a well known brand, or pure luck. Even games which happen to be good don't sell very well sometimes. I'm saddened, because SG seems to have fallen into that category. You guys poured your hearts out into it, and it's a really good game.

[Yak]

You guys poured your hearts out into it, and it's a really good game.

That right there is what broke my spirit, really. It's like the laws of physics no longer apply. At every other stage in my career, if you've really striven to put good stuff into a game, then the rewards have been broadly commensurate.

We really, truly bust a gut with SG. I've never put more effort into *anything*, and I had the confident belief that in doing so it would be worthwhile. That all the stress would stop and my health would recover.

But nothing much happened. The laws of physics broke.

And if hard work and passion yields... not much at all, how can one recover, how can one fix the situation? Not through hard work, and good intent, because that demonstrably does not work any more....

it's a really hard situation to recover from because after such a loss of confidence how do you believe and have faith in future work? It's hard to muster enthusiasm for something when after all it might come to naught.

I'm in a really odd place right now, especially with the new game really starting to shape up and feel good - but how can I trust my feelings about it after what happened last time? is "being any good" actually connected to "doing well" any more?

All I can try to do is attempt not to worry (hard after 6 months of constant anxiety) and hope things work out better next time and try not to let fears get in teh way of actually doing good work.

Weirdest damn situation I have ever been in in all my years in the biz.

[gilesgoat]

Yeah .. in short let's hope it will go better next time, this time it did not go that well.

XBLA works does not work ?

Mah .. it works for some, it does not work for everybody, it does not
work equally well as well.

Quite unpredictable ... admittedly I lost some enthusiasm in it a valid
thing if you are lucky I'd say but better not to dream anything about it.

[Darkflame]

My point was not the lack of need for money, but that it didnt have to come from a publisher. We might get speculative game investors, other games firms, or even some sort of "Game Futures" share-system.

But the problem is that these would wind up having exactly the same rules that publishers do. They would want to know as surely as possible that they would get their money back so they would be reluctant to finance original games, etc.

They will want a return on investment, sure.

But it isnt a closed system.

The same people you get your money from arnt the ones putting it on shelfs, doing the advertising, and demanding the release.
The developers are in as much or as little controll as they wish, there isnt one route.
The fact is, theres always going to be plenty of people that "think" they can do great games and cant, whatever the system. So theres always perfectly justified reasons for developers not getting money.

But online means a lot more games can get published.

With the death of a tranditional publishing system however, the need to have the game make an impact so quickly goes out the window.
The thresholds to get your game to the publish are infinitely lower online, and your infinitely more in controll.

I substantially disagree. Good 'Independent' games will tend to fail to attract significant marketshare if they attempt to do their own marketing, advertising and PR.

Products simply can't stand alone; you need to have particular skills to tease product - particularly if it is original IP or conceptually different - into the marketplace. In general, games houses will not have these skills, and there's a significant chance that the better and more focused the developers are on the quality of their game, the worse they will be at marketing.

A large developer can afford their own sales & marketing department, but then will tend to be less likely to offer original IP.

But they WONT, thats the point.

Publishers DONT invest heavily in new ideas, they DONT market the long-shot games.

They take advantage AFTER they are already a hit, then flog them to death with sequals.

Its not a question that developers are better at marketing, its a question that developers can get things done without the need for mostly arrogant publishers who wont publisher or support a game unless something simerla proformed well. (and probably recently too).
Its "Developers doing it themselfs" vs "Publishers not doing anything"
Not "Developers doing it themselfs" vs "Publishers spending buckets of cash premoting their unique game"

Also,
Theres plenty of examples of online games become a "cult hit" from word of mouth.
Stuff like LineRider, for instance.

Heck, theres normaly a "flash game of the month" flying around forums and emails from my expirence. (incidently, currently;
http://www.nitrome.com/games/yinyang/index.php
Is brillent)

Word of mouth still very much counts for something. Probably why Physocaughts is doing good on DD.

With small development, big advertising is just silly, because it raise's the margin needed for profit much higher. If your game dosnt have a shelf life AND you have an addictive, good product. You shouldnt need big marketing at all. Your game will always be sitting online, earning you money.

In comparison, how much money do developers get when their game is sold as a budget or multi-pack a few years after release?

In comparison, Publishers seem to be of the mantality these days that everything must be "spend a lot to get a lot", dishing out money to 9 big-budget flops, while ignoreing some inventive much smaller games that could make profit much more easily.
In physical publishing, if your not successfull in the first month, your not at all.

[radio]

re: darkflame.

You're talking about the Big Budget Publishers. And yes, those guys follow a lot of the things you're saying, because that's how they make money.

Some how you're managing to ignore all the non-BBP's and lumping all publishers into one big evil basket.

[Kamineko]

Heck, theres normaly a "flash game of the month" flying around forums and emails from my expirence. (incidently, currently;
http://www.nitrome.com/games/yinyang/index.php
Is brillent)

I pushed a white crate into a black crate and then the game screwed up.

[gilesgoat]

Let's make a practical example ...

If Space Giraffe would have sold at least twice than what it sold
to now it would have been much better yet it would have been "just
A BIT" to pay two people that worked 1 year solid to make it.

We can tell whatever we want but or the game is completely br0ked
( and it's not as game and playability are fun ) or something that should
have sold it is completely broked or missed totally the point to get
interest of the people in it well enough.

I don't know what the heck is wrong but something is deadly wrong.

Did we miss enough PR ? Did we miss some form of advert ? Did we
miss completely something ? Did we really make something completely
UNejoyable for most of the people ?

Did we really do something SO wrong or there's something that does
not work somewhere else ?

Is something really so complex that "the mayority of people can't get it ?"

Too challenging that people don't want to try it ?

Too different yet so "uninteresting" to not even spent 5 mins to have a look at it ?

People don't like to discover things and have a go with "something different" ?

We'll never understand a shit of this .. only hypothesis .. lot of controversial
opinons ..

If metacritics anyway is so well above the media so basically it means
"mayority of people says it's really nice and good" but even if it would
be "just 20% of them and it's not like that it's "over 70% of them" saying
it's good.

So where are the sales ?

The word of mouth ? The news spreading, people trying the game and getting it ?

You tell me .. it did not work at all like that .. fuck no .. we are still
struggling to see some sales and the fuck knows how is going to be.

So what ?

Where are all those "miracles" ? Where's all this system "working".

What does NOT work then and why ?

You tell me, I have no fucking clues at this moment.