RSSUser-developed games to be sold on Xbox Live for between $2.50 to $10
By Tim Conneally | Published July 22, 2008, 6:10 PM
Microsoft announced today that user-created games will be sold on Xbox Live through a new Community Games section starting this fall, with developers taking 70 percent of the revenue.
Almost two years ago, Microsoft first announced its plans to open Xbox 360 development to the public with the unveiling of its XP-compatible XNA Game Studio Express, and fully-featured XNA Game Studio.
During a showing of the product at Tech-Ed last year, Microsoft's David Weller mentioned that the company was exploring the possibility of creating an online community of XNA game developers that would be more than just a place to share ideas, but to also market and their products.
"[We] want to find some way of creating an environment where you as a developer are very, very motivated to create these really outstanding games, and perhaps give yourselves the opportunity to get some kind of reward from that," he said.
That environment is currently in beta testing, and will soon be ready for public consumption.
Similar to Apple's iPhone Developer Program, Microsoft's XNA Creator's Club charges developers $99 per year to sell the games they created with the XNA Game Studio toolset on the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Before they can be sold, however, all games must first pass a peer-review exam to ensure they are of suitable quality. Once approved, creators can set the price of their game between 200 and 800 Microsoft Points, or $2.50 and $10 USD, of which Microsoft takes 30 percent.
While a game developer will only earn $1.75 from a $2.50 download, the potential sales figures are quite large. Last year, the Ace Combat 6 demo, for example, was downloaded half a million times; comparable downloads at even the lowest price would net the developer $875,000.
In February, Xbox Live corporate vice president John Schappert said that Club-created games would more than double the size of the Xbox 360 games catalog, with over 1,000 games available in Community Games, Xbox Live Arcade and on disc. Microsoft repeated those figures in today's announcement.
Boyd Multerer, general manager of XNA Game Studio says that since the product's 2006 launch, XNAGS has been downloaded over 1 million times and is in use by more than 700 universities such as University of Washington, which has XNA-based projects in certain computer science classes.
Xbox Live Community Games will go live for users sometime this fall, although Microsoft has not yet announced a specific launch date.
I see Microsoft is copying Apple again....gotta have their own "App Store".
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|MS announced this over 6 months ago...and xbox live marketplace has been around for years...
So because apple has an iphone "store" suddenly MS is copying them because they have a store? If I open up a restaurant am I copying other buildings that server food? LOL this whole "Copy" thing is so ridiculous...especially in this case.
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|Just a comment, fanboys suck, k?
MS has had their version of apps and games in development for quite some time now. They always intended that novice programmers would get paid for their work but they hadn't announced pricing yet.
XNA has also been able to be used for creating applications for the Zune since April and they didn't charge people for it either...
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|Hate to tell you but this was talked about a long time ago.
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|fatty is stupid lol.
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|That's why Micro$oft is where it is: use the other's work, intelligence, sweat to their profits. But this is a brilliant move: 30% from games which can score billions is better than nothing. Wait and see if the others are going to follow this trend.
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|Uh...apple is doing that with the iphone already...
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|Point?
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|Point is...he's accusing MS of profiting off of "other peoples work"...I'm saying if that's the case apple is no better.
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|A lot of the games on live are very s***ty flash versions. I'd rather have the good demos to try out.
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|And no one is holding a gun to your head that says you have to buy them, either...
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|not only that...but you can actually play demos of all of them for free before buying to see if you like the game...
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|"Before they can be sold, however, all games must first pass a peer-review exam to ensure they are of suitable quality. Once approved, creators can set the price of their game between 200 and 800 Microsoft Points, or $2 and $8 USD, of which Microsoft takes 30 percent. "
That is incorrect.
200 Points is $2.50
800 Points is $10.00
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|Thanks for catching that, it has been corrected.
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|"Microsoft announced today that user-created games will be sold on Xbox Live through a new Community Games section starting this fall, with developers taking 70 percent of the revenue."
That sounds pretty fair to me....unlike this photo site I was looking at that only gives me 40% of the profits from my photos. What a load of crap that is.
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