14 DAY TRIAL // XNA Community Games are promoted by Microsoft as being one of the easiest ways for indie developers and small teams to get a game out, attract attention from the public and make some money in order to finance more projects. Unfortunately, taking a look at the list of games released, downloads and sales, the numbers are not very encouraging for small developers.
Gamasutra has put together a chart showing the figures for 24 different XNA games and the main problem for them seems to be that only a small number of those using the Xbox 360 know of them and choose to get demo versions.
A smaller number of people choose to buy the games. It seems that players are not interested in paying for those titles that cost 5 dollars or more mainly because they perceive them to be too costly for what they offer. For the games priced lower, the revenue brought in by sales is rarely big enough for more development, with titles like Johnny Platform's Biscuit Romp, Groov, and ZP2K being successes mainly because they managed to get attention from gamers through alternative promotion means.
One of the most high profile titles released on XNA has been Weapon of Choice, created by Mommy's Best Games, a small outfit headed by Nathan Fouts, who also worked for Insomniac.
Fouts’ game brought in less than 10,000 dollars in revenue since November 2008. Fouts has called the results disappointing but he also stated that “What all that means to our bottom-line, we do not yet know, but it does not feel great. Maybe rational people hang up their keyboard and call it quits. But if you played Weapon of Choice, you realise we’re far from rational.” One of his complaints is the fact that Microsoft takes too much of the cash generated by one game on XNA.