I’ll admit, I’m finding some of the reactions to the announcement of the XBox 360 community games stats more than a little befuddling. I can’t help but feel that perhaps the problem isn’t necessarily one of low sales but more of high expectations, something that even when setting up xnPlay I can’t say I had for the service.
Sure, I was aware that it was going to do fairly well, and indeed it has done so, but I could never manage to get into the headspace that induces gold rush fever in people. Perhaps somewhere down the line, partially the blame lies with Microsoft. After all, being the gatekeepers of the service they’re responsible for managing expectations and it’s not in their interest to play down the value of the community games. It’s hardly likely that a company reliant on bringing indie developers onto the 360 are going to turn round and say “well, y’know, develop for us but don’t expect your pockets to be spilling over with gold from our virtual monies purchases”.
Even if MS did come out and say something along those lines, it’ll only take one person to look at the iTunes App Store and get a stiffy at the thought of reproducing the success of a minority of apps/games on the service before others start following suit. As a race, we’re not exactly the most sensible thinking things that walk this Earth, especially when you start to include the pursuit of money into an equation.
The announced sales figures so far were (with a few scant and noble exceptions – people, buy Duotrix) pretty much what I expected to see. I’m not going to claim I had the foresight to make approximate numerical predictions within 2 digits or the like, but they certainly didn’t raise an eyebrow from me when glancing down the list.
None of this really boggles me. What boggles me is the amount of people queuing up decrying Microsoft for failing to deliver the required sales*. This is usually coupled with suggestions for dashboard improvements to stick these games right in peoples faces. Where this idea falls down, really, is that it’s a technical solution. The problem itself is a social one. It’s still going to be there even if Microsoft implement every single request that the community games developers want.
There’s no denying that the NXE and it’s handling of community games could be improved. The time to populate the games list is horrendous, the visibility of titles is poor and even with the leaps and bounds from the old blades interface, there’s still not nearly enough information available on titles. With the rate of releases on the CC being what it is, it’d test the average person to try them all. These are, without a shadow of a doubt, things that Microsoft can improve upon.
There’s still one major problem which is out of Microsofts hands.
Community Games are a niche within a niche within a niche.
In January 2009, there was an install base of somewhere in the region of 28 million. In February 2009, according to press releases, Xbox Live connected 17 million of the 28 million to each other. You can see where this is heading already can’t you? The last report I read (which admittedly is quite old) stated that 70% of the people connected to Live had downloaded an arcade game from Live. So, we’re knocking this figure down even further as we go. The attach rate was placed at 6/7 games on average. Out of over 150 titles on XBLA, the attach rate is 6 or 7. And that’s considered good.
So, we keep on cutting that number down.
Then we get to community games and well, they’re already a niche unto themselves by their very nature… and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that you haven’t got access to the entire install base of the 360 as a community games developer but not only that, if proper bona fide XBLA developers are losing a massive slice of the market with their fully featured titles, where does that leave things?
Hopefully the answer is “with reasonable expectations”.
If you take into account that there’s a good chance that the 6 or 7 games are truly big hitters, take into account the amount of people who only really turn on Live so that they can scream insults at either their friends or a random during a Halo 3 session and then take into account that you’re not dealing with massive megamoney blockbusters in general on the CC… the sales figures so far make a lot more sense. In fact, they look really rather fucking good all told.
Visibility is, I fear, only a small part of the battle developers on the CC are up against and if folks can learn to manage their expectations and their budgets accordingly, the CC can go to some fantastic places. In fact, I feel confident in saying that it already is. There may be some guff there, but there’s some very special stuff too.
Expecting Microsoft to pull the sales fairy out of its arse isn’t going to happen though, even if all the NXE issues are addressed. Developers are going to have to start grasping the fact that MS are distributors and it’s in the communities hands to raise their own profiles if they really want to clutch at mega bucks.
This is going to take work. Work creating things people want to buy and work putting themselves, their name and their game out there. It’s going to take a lot more work than a few dashboard adjustments, that’s for sure.
*required sales may vary depending on developer, levels of sanity and ability to understand words of more than one silly bull.