Developing for Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA)

EDIT: I’ll be updating this article shortly following Microsoft’s XNA / XBox Live Community Games announcement. Suffice to say, XNA is now a potentially fantastic route for indies to take, but it does depend how it is promoted to users. If they don’t ever see your games, they can never buy them however good they are. Also, where exactly does this leave XBox Live Arcade? EDIT END.

Originally available for the Xbox, XBLA was an integral part of the Xbox 360 at launch. This makes it by far and away the most mature of the console digital distribution platforms.

By all accounts it’s also the most successful. Figures on Wikipedia claim it to have a high attach rate and conversion rate, although true numbers are hard to come by if you aren’t under NDA with Microsoft. VGChartz attempt to estimate real sales figures but don’t expect them to be particularly accurate.

Titles on the system are a very mixed bag of indie games, poor retro ports, half-decent retro ports, casual games, and - increasingly - original titles and sequels from the traditional publishers you know and love.

From a user point of view, the biggest issue is the dashboard interface. Users are faced with long lists of titles making it difficult to find anything. That’s important because it means your game could disappear very quickly indeed, and it’s undoubtedly costing Microsoft users. The quality of many of the titles has also been hotly debated. Both of these factors have lead to the much discussed delisting policy of which I’m certainly not a fan.

Below are some of the pros and cons developers should be considering.

Xbox Live Arcade - Pros

• Established system with existing user base and proven sales record.
• The most popular console downloadable game environment.
• Successful indie games exist on the system, e.g. Penny Arcade’s Precipice of Darkness, N+, Alien Hominid, Eets and the Mutant Storm series.
• It is possible to do well financially if you’re game does well, and some of the above certainly have.
• Good development environment.
• Similar to PC platform allowing a PC version to be developed at low cost.

Xbox Live Arcade - Cons

• Barrier to entry: Microsoft restricts projects based upon a green light process. This can take months even with a good project, and perhaps most projects are turned down. That may be to avoid clashes with other titles, pre-existing PC release, lack of experience in the development team, or for any other reason they see fit. Being green lit is not an easy process and it can take a lot of work, proof of concept demos included.
• Barrier to entry: Development kits must be bought.
• Barrier to entry: You may be required to support the Live! service, and this can bump development and QA costs considerably.
• Barrier to entry: Development costs must account for TCR handling - that means following strict Microsoft rules for how things should work. If you’ve never done this before, you’re in for a shock. There’s an awful lot that can and will go wrong that you would never have thought of, or you think is unimportant or crazy.
• Microsoft control the release slots, payments, how your game is handled on the system - well, everything! Announcements such as the delisting policy show that they are quite prepared to change the rules.
• Microsoft have to approve the project, both technically and content-wise. The submissions and approval process can be unexpectedly lengthy, especially if you are self-publishing.
• Unicode localisation and age ratings are required. There are time and money considerations to both of these factors.
• Simply having a game on the system doesn’t mean it will sell, despite what people seem to think. You still need to market your game and it still needs to have an audience.
• It is unclear how pro-indie XBLA really is right now. It could end up being dominated by traditional publishers, and some will say it already is. Microsoft are pushing indies to XNA, a cheaper alternative.
• Self-published XBLA game royalty rates may be different for an indie compared to a regular publisher.
• Xbox hardware is reportedly not selling as well as Wii or PS3.
• Exclusivity restrictions are likely.
• Interface usability issues given the large number of games available.

XBLA is certainly a cut above the rest at the moment and has strong positives, but it’s future is unclear. If you can get through the green light process then you will probably be able to find funding or a publisher, but that first stage is much harder than you might imagine.

Developers without commercial experience should consider XNA before XBLA. Besides, a good XNA project could be successful in its own right and may also help with a future jump to XBLA.

More information on Xbox Live Arcade developer submissions can be found here.

The next article in the series can be found here, and this time it’s about WiiWare.

EDIT: Great opinion piece on Gamasutra where 2D Boy (World of Goo) explains issues with XBox Live Arcade for indies.