XNAC dev depressed by size of MS' cut

By Robert Purchese Published 30 March, 2009

60 per cent of Weapon of Choice sales.

Weapon of Choice developer Mommy's Best Games says Microsoft can claim as much as 60 per cent from Xbox Live Community game sales.

Update: Microsoft has altered its policy and now maintains a 30 per cent cut across the board.

MBG president Nathan Fouts recently received sales figures for November 2008 to March 2009, and was shocked and depressed to find that Weapon of Choice sold under 10,000 copies - a figure he had pre-emptively labelled "that hurts".

According to Fouts, Microsoft takes a baseline 30 per cent of money made, on top of an additional 10 to 30 per cent for advertising. Plus there are royalties owed to contractors and state taxes to play. That's not to mention rent and food.

"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," writes Fouts.

Yet despite this setback, Fouts and MBG are hard at work on their project, although they're not ready to say anything concrete.

Head over to our Weapon of Choice review to see what the fuss is about.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (49) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kill_Crazy #1 3 years ago

    Mugs.

  • Dizzy #2 3 years ago

    60% seems rather high. Most publishers will take up to 40% (well at least that is my experience).
    Edited by 1 at 30/03/09 @ 15:34

  • drumbaby #3 3 years ago

    So, not as kind to devs as Sony's business model?

    That's really nice...

  • seasidebaz #4 3 years ago

    If Microsoft put you on the Spotlight bit of CG, or even in the "New Arrivals" bit, they will take 60%. It's actually all there in the Ts&Cs of the signup. If your game's not being advertised, they take 30% and whatever tax is due.

    Sucks to not read what you're signing up for.

  • Sonic_D #5 3 years ago

    Thieving twats. The 360 may be the best console to own at the mo, but my hate for MS is unabated. When I got RRoD 1 month out of warranty they wanted £70-80 to fix it. Meant I had to wait 3 months until when they announced the blanket returns policy for RRoD, meaning a total of 4 months without a working console.

    Penny pinching, cheap cunts. Support the XNA community, don't steal from them.
    Edited by 1 at 30/03/09 @ 15:41

  • Coughthulu #6 3 years ago

    I guess there's two sides to this, though.

    Without advertising, unless people are trawling the Community Games Marketplace constantly, play the game and then spread the word that you absolutely, positively have to get this game... you're not going to get the sales.

    On the flipside, if you get noticed, I assume MS feel they've given you the potential to increase your sales by an order of magnitude.

    Again, it comes down to how much you're willing to charge for a game and how much profit you'll consequently make. It does, however, suck a bit that you can't say "No, please don't put the game in the spotlight and take 60%".

  • Dizzy #7 3 years ago

    >Penny pinching, cheap cunts. Support the XNA community, don't steal from them.

    Could have been worse. Could have been Apple.

  • Monkey_Puncher #8 3 years ago

    Shit, that's not cool!

    If they want people to take XNA seriously they really need to support the dev's better than this.

  • brof #9 3 years ago

    well, on the Iphone apple gets 30% in total for each sale.... I think that is pretty decent
    cheers

  • Ringot #10 3 years ago

    Your news says: Weapon of Choice had made under USD 10,000 - a figure he had pre-emptively labelled "that hurts"

    If you re-read fouts post, its 10,000 units sold, not income earned. At $5 a game thats over $50,000 dollars. Minus Microsofts (upto) 60% and overall they have "more income from four months of sales than the average U.S. citizen earns in a full year", “median annual earnings were $32,000.”

    More quotes that Quotey McQuoter. Get it right!

  • GamesConnoisseur #11 3 years ago

    So for our interest what is Sony's take? As equally good as Apple or as equally 'greedy' as MS?

    60% sounds like a lot though! I likewise loved X360 but desists the mega corp that is MS!

  • DrDamn #12 3 years ago

    Dunno about this. If a normal publisher takes 40% then what about the retailer? As that is also what MS is doing too. Bit silly to complain now too. You sign up to it and plan based around those rules. Don't like them? Then go somewhere else maybe?

    Sony also don't have a comparable service - this is very much home brew and not PSN Store or LiveArcade.

  • TripSkyway #13 3 years ago

    Ringot has a point. Units sold not $.

  • miiiguel #14 3 years ago

    I think publishers would be upset if Community Games started to be financially more attractive than Live Arcade. Weapon of Choice is maybe "too big" for CG.

  • BillyBrush #15 3 years ago

    30% then??

  • Calgon #16 3 years ago

    Are EG owned by Sony or something? ;)

    It does appear sometimes they are trying to bash MS by way of missleading articles, or comments at the end which sometimes show the author didnt understand or even read the report properly.

  • gingerlink #17 3 years ago

    XNA site says they've decided to keep it 70:30 (dev:MS) for the time being regardless of whether it has been featured or not

  • CaptainBinky #18 3 years ago

    Surely they knew the size of the cut before going in - it was quite clear in the MS documentation for CGs how much they will take. So are they not simply saying, "we are disappointed by our sales"?

  • steviepunk #19 3 years ago

    "So for our interest what is Sony's take? As equally good as Apple or as equally 'greedy' as MS? "

    "If they want people to take XNA seriously they really need to support the dev's better than this. "

    Do Sony allow for community/hobby-ist developed games on PSN?

    As far as I am aware they do not, to develop for PSN or XBLA you require a development kit, which costs a fair amount of money, while it is fairly cheap (£99 a year subscription to XNA developers club?) to get a game onto the Community Games area of Xbox Live (obviously not counting developments costs, just the 'barrier to publication' costs) .

    Although I'd agree that 60% is a bit much (particularly as a dev can't opt to not get 'promoted' by MS), at least MS are giving bedroom coders the opportunity to get their work to a potential audience of 20m+ users.

  • Coughthulu #20 3 years ago

    @brof

    "well, on the Iphone apple gets 30% in total for each sale.... I think that is pretty decent
    cheers"

    Well... yes. And no.

    Due to new T&Cs from Apple, if a customer demands a refund, the developer has to give back 100% of the cost... regardless of the fact they only made 70% of the profit. If everyone demands a refund, you end up in debt to Apple. I think that's the worst of any of these schemes.

    http://techdirt.com/articles/20090324/0815134230.shtml

    At the end of the day, MS are giving people the opportunity to develop games for a popular console for a tiny initial fee, which has got to be a good thing.
    Edited by 1 at 30/03/09 @ 17:17

  • penhalion #21 3 years ago

    Currently microsoft's cut is idiotic and not justifiable in any way. As more and more devs get hit by this, one of two things is going to happen. Devs will simply stop making community games for the service and move on to IPhone/iTouch or back to PC.

    If the figure was set at 30% standard plus 10% tops for advertising, then fair do's but, 60%! That's more than half of your revenue gone. Not because your game was crap but, because it was good enough to be promoted!

    Hopefully EG and others will persue this nonsense and get a response from Microsoft on how they can even begin to justify such a nonsense figure. Especially as any community games dev has already spent 99 dollars for the ability to publish. Jumped through tax hoops that are just plain wrong and seem design ed for Microsoft to fleece the devs outright.

    When you look at apples model and microsofts, you have to wonder how microsoft are getting away with it. On the surface it sounds great but, underneath it seems to be as close to outright fraud as you can legally get!

  • onyxbox #22 3 years ago

    the real problem with XNA is that *most* (not all) of the stuff is utter garbage and as a result people just don't bother going there.
    MS should be spotting the good stuff and putting it on the 'real' marketplace.

  • Xerx3s #23 3 years ago

    penhalion: or a third option will happen, they will endure. Let's be honest, if a dev gets raped with fees but ends up making more money than a platform like the pc that lacks them, it's a bitter pill that most dev's will end up swallowing.

    Quite frankly, I don't think that 10 000 units (EG should learn to read when quoting an article) for an indie game is bad. Tbh, it's a figure that we will be over the moon with when we release our first game. That means that we have 40 000 in income minus 30% (if you had actually read the article before your blinding rage erupted) base income for ms. Leaves us with a healthy starting money pot.

    Not bad for a part time job for a couple of months.

    That doesn't even take into account the extremely easy to port code (we could port the entire game in less than a month to just about any platform).

  • BillyBrush #24 3 years ago

    @Pen

    it's not 60% though is it, it's 30%

    which is a lot, but no dev kit required, just a download of vis C studio and XNA for free, then join the club if you want to, which has to be the lowest barrier of anything but the PC flash scene

    also, do bear in mind that WOC was made by someone who'd worked in a major games studio making major games....that being a Sony PS3 exclusive

    so...it sounds worse than it is

  • XBoxDragon #25 3 years ago

    I believe the apple 100% refund thing was refuted and debunked as inaccurate information in practise.

  • alpha-0ne #26 3 years ago

    #Wow lets clear somehting up#

    This is community arcade game not commercial XBLA game!!

    For $80 you can effectively develop an xbox360 game and sell your game to a community of 10 million plus live users..

    This is a community channel not a commercial game channel if you want to make an offical game get a publisher, agree terms who will market for you etc etc

    As for people saying sony charge less well they dont have a community games channel only commerical through publishers (who take their own cut for marketing)..
    Edited by 3 at 30/03/09 @ 18:03

  • Psychotext #27 3 years ago

    So I've just been reading through the community games forums and apparently this isn't right... the split is now 70/30 (Dev/MS) whether or not your game is featured / advertised etc.

  • penhalion #28 3 years ago

    @Xerx3s and BillyBrush

    First Xerx3s

    You are forgetting that you need to pay tax in your country of origin on top of the 30% taken by Microsoft. If we work on a figure of 10,000 sales with no advertising or promotion fees and let's say we sell for 5 dollars. The math should be

    50,000 dollars gross

    now for the deductions
    50,000 - 30% publishing fee (50000 * 0.70) = 35000

    convert to your local currency (i'll do both pounds and euros for you)
    £24,648.20p or 26,529.2 EUR
    24,648.20p - country of origin tax (based on uk as that's where I am) = 40% on all additional income so
    24,648.20p * 0.60 = 14788.92

    Basically I'm taking fourteen and a half grand from 35,211.80p worth of sales

    @BillyBrush

    Now let's look at the same calculations with Microsofts promotional percentage also taken shall we (we'll go for their maximum 30% additional take for promotion).

    50,000 dollars gross

    now for the deductions
    50,000 - 30% publishing fee + additional 30% promotion and advertising fee (50000 * 0.40) = 20000

    convert to your local currency (i'll do both pounds and euros for you)
    £ 14,084.70p or 15,159.50 EUR
    14,084.70p - country of origin tax (based on uk as that's where I am) = 40% on all additional income so
    14,084.70p * 0.60 = 8450.82

    Basically I'm taking just eight and a half grand from 35,211.80p worth of sales

    As I've said earlier, this is a nonsense. Note that if this is your sole income you will or at least should be taxed less than the 40% I mentions in your country of origin.

    I doubt if many indies will stick around to reap in these figures.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #29 3 years ago

    penhalion,

    Why are you even quoting tax figures?!! That's nothing to do with MS! You get taxed no matter what alternatives are available ,so get off your soap box.

    They take a 30% cut. End of. It's the same as Apple and Sony don't offer the service at all.

    I've got the choice of putting my game out on PC, having it disappear into the Internet somewhere with all the other games, and if people do manage to find my game, there's a good chance they'll pirate the fuck out of it. Not to mention if it is a reasonable success I'll have to pay bandwidth charges and go through the hassle of setting up a payment system and tying it in with an anti-piracy choice.

    Or I can upload it to MS and get on with promoting the game for as many sales as possible.

    Once it's had it's run on the 360 I may look at releasing it on Steam.

  • CaptainBinky #30 3 years ago

    This all smells of "buy my game" advertising to me. ;o)

  • penhalion #31 3 years ago

    @SpaceMidget75

    They take 30% only if they don't feature your game on the site. If you are a featured game they take at minimum an additional 10% and can take upto an additional 30%

    Alot of the people commenting in this thread are clearly neither members of the creators club nor have a clue what the terms for community games are. Your insistence that Microsoft take only 30% and that's it is nonsense and debunked by their own figures and even from the mouth of the guy whome this article is about!

    Seriously, if you don't have a clue what you are talking about you only end up looking extremely stupid when you try to spout incorrect facts.

    For instance do you even know that because Microsoft class the payments from them as royalties, you end up paying an additional 30% withholding to the us government unless you have aquired an ITIN number and filed a w8ben form with microsoft that includes this ITIN number. The number can be obtained by going to the american embassy in london and filing a W7 form along with your passport as proof of who you are and your residency.

    If someone got the filing wrong and were featured by microsoft at their maximum advertising level. They would find that they got a mere 10% of which they would then also be locally taxed. 30% flat fee + 30% advertising fee + 30% withholding = 90%. Although this is unlikely to happen as Microsoft have yet to promote anyone heavily enough to justify taking the full 30% extra. It can happen and is therefore something that any potential creator needs to take into account. The tax withholding issue is down to the creator to sort out, as is paying local tax on their eventual earnings (if any at all).

    I don't normally get angry but, I'm getting fed up of idiots who seem to have no clue what the community games contracts entail, trying to make out like they have clue one what the hell is going on here.

    For anyone that is a community developer or who is thinking of becoming one I advise you to read this article. It explains a lot and includes the information about the additional 10 - 30% that microsoft take based on how much they decide to promote your game (you don't have a say in the matter! You can't ask them NOT to promote your game).

    http://ww w.gamesetwatch.com/2009/03/game...

    Edited by 3 at 30/03/09 @ 21:30

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #32 3 years ago

    1) I've been a member of creators club for over a year. Check if you like.

    2) Their base rate is 30% which is the same as the only other comparable service out there, which is why I mentioned it as such. The additional revenue does not affect a huge amount of sales as you even mentioned yourself they've yet to promote someone the full 30%. 10% from your sales while it's on the new arrivals page for a week is not a big deal.

    4) Even after saying the above, the guys own blog has stated that MS have now waived that policy so, until I hear otherwise, "They take a 30% cut. End of."

    3) Yes I am aware of the W7 form. I read the faq a while back when I was ready to write my game. I'd hope most would do the same.

    4) Yet again, that is a US governmental taxation and nothing to do with MS. They could perhaps have changed the way they sell the games but fill out the form and it's not a problem.

    5) You didn't respond to my question on tax. You have to be taxed! You would be taxed no matter how you sold your game! That has nothing to do with this system. Stop using it in your argument against CG and MS's pricing.

    6) You also ignored the downsides to selling on PC which I mentioned. CG is far far from perfect but moaning about how much you have left after, amongst other things, being taxed AS PER NORMAL, is stupid.

    "I don't normally get angry but, I'm getting fed up of idiots who seem to have no clue what the community games contracts entail, trying to make out like they have clue one what the hell is going on here."

    Here's a mirror.

  • beckyh #33 3 years ago

    If they do not like the costs they should go and host their game elsewhere.
    If people agree to the terms and then whine, then I have no sympathy. They have a captive audience, use it or don't bother and try and make it alone hosting the game for PC on a blog where it is unlikely to be seen amongst a million other blogs.

  • BillyBrush #34 3 years ago

    @Pen

    I use visual c studio and xna, personally i don't go round calling myself game developer as i'm not, but those programs are free, can be used without joining the club, and i consider outside the flash scene this is the lowest barrier of entry, there's some fairly chunky %ages there sure, but as an individual you can distribute your game to PC, 360, and not any other console, so really your rants seem a little odd to me, are Nintendo and Sony better in this regard given they offer...nothing?

    Re tired of people who don't know the deal, we can assume you have released a game for the community then, and are talking from a position of experience?

  • metalangel #35 3 years ago

    Hey, at least it's not Jonathan 'they FORCED ME TO MAKE MONEY!' Blow griping about this sort of stuff for a change.

  • StooMonster #36 3 years ago

    penhalion: W8BEN ... NO! Although count your blessings it's only that form. (Off topic rant #1) Why are American government forms so badly laid out with such tiny boxes in which to put so much information? (Off topic rant #2) Yep, cheers IRS, thanks for making me register with you as well as our beloved (not) HMRC even though I am not an American citizen. :'(

    As to Microsoft, they make Apple's 30% all-in cut sound very attractive indeed; and Apple excellent Dev software is completely free, albeit you have to buy a Mac Mini or some kind of Mac if you don't have one.

    Is the advertising cost compounded? i.e. do they take 10% to 30% of your 70%?

  • TheBard #37 3 years ago

    Microsoft gets 60% from sales of a game developed with /their/ framework, playable on /their/ infrastructure and available through /their/ online service when /they/ put up big advertisement.

    So?

    Seems fair. It's not like they suddenly attach price tags to everything, people get what they signed up for. And this guy signed up for 40%.

  • frycrayola #38 3 years ago

    Reading the blog entry, once the "Microsoft take 60%" theory is debunked, there's no whinging (and even then, not really any).

    It's more about the disappointment of their lower sales, not a complaint about where the money is going. That part of the entry just seems to be an explanation about why 10,000 units isn't terrific for them.

    It's a shame that top-tier games aren't even breaking the 10,000 mark, given the installed userbase.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #39 3 years ago

    Exactly fry, sales are disappointing and this is more the issue. I would suggest that while I've seen a few good games on there, most are crap. This stops people from trying them as it's not worth the hit count to find a quality one. It's been said many times before but there needs to be a rating system that is carefully designed to allow new games to get a try and existing good games to get noticed.


    @Stoo, could you please read the rest of this thread?

    It's not 60%, it's 30%
    The advertising fee has been waived for the moment.
    It is the same as Apples cut.
    MS dev tools are also free.
    Edited by 1 at 31/03/09 @ 00:21

  • Sunyavadin #40 3 years ago

    Weapon of choice is awesome.

    I still say XNA games need achievements, even if limited to say, 5 zero-point ones.

  • seasidebaz #41 3 years ago

    Oh, look what I found! It's almost as if the XNA team wrote something about getting paid!

    What is the exact promotional fee going to be?
    It will be between 10-30 percent for all featured games. It has not yet been determined what that percentage will be.

    When will you decide what the exact promotional fee is?
    It will be decided prior to the end of the initial quarter.

  • berelain #42 3 years ago

    I'm not a dev or community game dev, but at the end of the day, you're getting your product out on one of the most popular gaming platforms around without having to do any promotional work yourself, and its there for every user to see, so no-one has to hunt around trying to find whatever obscure game you have decided to release. I think thats a fair price for getting your name out there and your product into people's radars, even if only on the periphery. Its certainly more than most indie game devs get.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #43 3 years ago

    seasidebaz, was that post made to argue against mine saying its only 30%?

  • seasidebaz #44 3 years ago

    Yes. I too have been a member for a year. I'm about to get my 2nd year renewal through on the 6th.

    You are right though. It's a BASE 30% before they start adding promo on top.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #45 3 years ago

    Yeah, except they've waived the 10-30% promo apparently. So at the moment it's 30% all in. :)

  • BobsUncle #46 3 years ago

    @BillyBrush

    "i consider outside the flash scene this is the lowest barrier of entry"

    You do realise that Flash costs hundreds of pounds don't you? (£562 on the Adobe website) Unless you have a pirate copy of course. Which is a lot more expensive than a few free downloads and a $100 (£70) yearly subscription.

  • StooMonster #47 3 years ago

    SpaceMidget75: how about you read the article? Microsoft takes a baseline 30 per cent of money made, on top of an additional 10 to 30 per cent for advertising.

    Microsoft's cut-down development tools are free, the proper versions I pay for with my annual MSDN licenses are expensive; Apple give their industrial-strength development tools away for free.
    Edited by 1 at 31/03/09 @ 15:31

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #48 3 years ago

    Stoo.

    Listen carefully....

    1) IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS. MS HAVE WAIVED THE 10-30%. FOR THE TIME BEING IT IS THE SAME AS APPLE!!

    2) I use VS2008 Team Edition everyday for my job, so put your cock away, we're not measuring them. C# Express and GS 3.0 does everything you need it to do to get an XNA Game up and running. Apples Dev software does everything you need it to do to get an iPhone game up and running. WHAT IS YOUR POINT?

    If you're having to resort to nit-picking feature lists between 2 dev studios that make no difference to the end product we're talking about here, you should give up now.

  • SpaceMidget75 Verified Senior Software Developer, Minerva Computer Services #49 3 years ago

    From 'The Article':

    "Update: Microsoft has altered its policy and now maintains a 30 per cent cut across the board."

    LOL