Xbox Live indie games earn six figures

By Robert Purchese Published 26 January, 2010

More than just a home for prototypes?

Despite cries of "woeful" marketing and a service that's "not financially viable", developers are making decent money on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel.

The teams themselves reported revenues ranging between $21,000 (£13,000) and $129,500 (£80,200), and revealed a strong rate of converts from trial to full-game purchase.

GamerBytes deduced that best seller "I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMB1ES 1NIT!!!1", which has been downloaded 160,000 times, made around $112,000 (£69,366) after Microsoft's cut. Avatar Drop and RC-AirSim were the second and third best sellers in 2009, but only converted a small number of their 400,000-plus trial users.

Avatar Drop made $81,900 (£50,714) and RC-AirSim made $129,000 (£79,880).

Titles outside of the top 20 best-seller list made a lot less, taking home between $500 (£310) and $17,500 (£10,835).

Today, the list of best-selling Xbox Live Indie Games has two new leaders: The Impossible Game and Soul. Have you played them? Are they good? Do let us know! We won't laugh.

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 (31) Latest comment 2 years ago

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

  • notorious_roy #1 2 years ago

    They could make even more if it was available worldwide :(

  • Crea #2 2 years ago

    Time to dust off me old XNA skills methinks!

  • seasidebaz #3 2 years ago

    The Impossible Game is actually rather good. Bloody hard though.

  • DontLikeJelly #4 2 years ago

    Not available in Belgium :(

    I refuse to start messing with fake UK/US accounts.

  • Murton #5 2 years ago

    They could make even more if it was available worldwide :(

    +1. I really don't understand why these small time developers are tying themselves to a platform that is only available in 26 countries (LIVE) when they could make for the PC and go worldwide on the regular net or Steam.

    MS really needs to stop buying exclusive DLCs and invest that cash in adding more countries to LIVE in my opinion. As the online aspect of gaming continues to grow they run the risk of simply not selling units in unsupported territories in the next generation, whenever that may be.

  • Shinetop #6 2 years ago

    Hey, you know what would be cool? If this service was actually available.

  • MyPointIs #7 2 years ago

    Don't forget there are 765 indie games already. To put it another way, only 1 game every 38 makes more than 10k (most of them are way closer to the £310 figure).

    So that's only 1 game out of 765 making 'six figures' in *dollars*, and before taxes. Hardly 'indie games earn six figures' as the title claims.

    Enough to buy you a games console if you are a student, but no way to make a living.
    Edited by 1 at 26/01/10 @ 10:49

  • wizlon #8 2 years ago

    I've made about £15 on my game so far... good luck

  • penhalion #9 2 years ago

    The low figures are because of no advertising or support from the gaming press. Just look at the article aboveand I quote

    "Today, the list of best-selling Xbox Live Indie Games has two new leaders: The Impossible Game and Soul. Have you played them? Are they good? Do let us know! We won't laugh."

    Do let us know and we won't laugh. as the end sentences. Basically EG want to promote indie games as being a complete joke even though some of them are quite good. With attitudes like that what chance do these indies have.

  • zombies #10 2 years ago

    Impossible Game is good.

    Has the Trials HD symptoms of 'must have another go' After 10 mins I was shouting at my friend for recommending it due to the addictive/difficult nature of it.

    Finishing it felt so so good!

  • Toothball #11 2 years ago

    A friend showed me a game called Storage, where up to four of you drove forklift trucks around a warehouse. It was way more fun than it should have been as we kept crashing into each other and boxing each other in before we got the hang of it. I hadn't really been paying much attention to Indie games but I think I should probably start.

  • miiiguel #12 2 years ago

    The Impossible Game is actually rather good. Bloody hard though.

    It fooled me, it has a misleading name.

  • toythatkills #13 2 years ago

    O rly? Have you finished it without flags then?

  • Chazmeister #14 2 years ago

    I tried that Soul the other night, it has very nice artwork but the game itself is very basic and annoying as hell. It's basically a varient on those buzzer gamers where you have to move a ring around a wire maze without touching the wire. Only in this case you move a glowing wisp like soul around a series of locations trying to avoid touching the sides and other obstacles.

  • Stomp224 #15 2 years ago

    Ha! Is that before MS takes its cut or after? I admit im only bitter because as the Audio guy of a 4-man team I only get a percentage of the pittance our games earn. :(

    On that note: my latest game is out, please give it a try. PLEASE. I have 5 kids to feed!

  • tomjoadsghost #16 2 years ago

    @wizlon - you need to plug it more! what is it?
    @stomp224 have downloaded it but not tried it yet.

    has anyone else tried "pluckys 3d adventures" yet? - its an absolute steal for 80pts (no im not connected to it in any way)

  • Shinetop #17 2 years ago

    Ha! Is that before MS takes its cut or after? I admit im only bitter because as the Audio guy of a 4-man team I only get a percentage of the pittance our games earn. :(

    If you don't like Microsoft taking a cut, why not pay for your own hosting, distribution, etc?

  • darleysam #18 2 years ago

    Soul had a good premise (guiding the soul of a dead man to heaven) and very nice artwork, but the gameplay straight away boiled down to "navigate through the maze without touching the walls", complete with boo-scares. This was a crushing let-down as I was genuinely interested until that point.

  • Retroid #19 2 years ago

    Blimey, that's more than I thought they'd be making.

    Have to say I'm far more likely to plonk my cash down after they brought in the (much) lower prices and the 80point price-point actually has some pretty good stuff in there. Still some utter crap but they're being shown up by some of the great releases I've seen on there recently.

  • fknetwork #20 2 years ago

    @ Stomp224,
    Downloading now, looks very good from the screenshots! how long did it take your team to make and publish?

  • kangarootoo #21 2 years ago

    It might sound like a lot, but its a handful of rare examples as others have poinnted out.

    Also, I don't know what the average team size is, but it only needs 2 or 3 guys working on a game before everyone's slice of the pie ends up being rather small.

    As a platform for trying out ideas, or as a kind of "public CV" for someone looking to get more work in the industry, this is a fine platform. But its not the money spinner the article suggests and neither will it be anytime soon.

  • monkeywithnoeyes #22 2 years ago

    soul looks great...but it's got the most frustrating "gameplay" i've experienced in a long time. Shame, as the art styles spot on for an indie game

  • Pickster #23 2 years ago

    Just wanted to give a shout out to Miner Dig Deep.... and its only 80 points.

  • Stomp224 #24 2 years ago

    @ fknetwork

    From start to finish = 13 months. It was done mostly in everybodys spare time. I was the audio chap, btw :)

  • fknetwork #25 2 years ago

    @ Stomp224
    Ah cool! I hope it works out for you I really do!

    I have downloaded and will be trying it in the next half an hour, just had to buy a new gold membership as it ran out this morning:

    "This mail is confirmation that your subscription to Xbox Live Prepaid 3 month Gold Membership Card has been cancelled on 27 January 2010." lol
    Edited by 2 at 27/01/10 @ 11:06

  • Ryze #26 2 years ago

    @MyPointIs, wizlon

    Your game has to be good, though.

    edit:

    @Stomp224

    I'll defintitely have a go - it looks appealing, after just glancing at the lovely screenshots! I also have 600 spare points, you reminded me of Total Recall and made me chuckle (in my head), you also reminded me of a childhood favourite game of mine - Rainbow Islands - which should have been ported to XBLA by now - THE ORIGINAL GAME - and you made a cheeky plug on here.

    Sold, fella - impulse purchase.
    Edited by 2 at 27/01/10 @ 11:47

  • SpaceMonkey77 #27 2 years ago

    I think its quite cheeky of MS to be taking a cut of such games. So basically, you are paying £/$100 for XNA memebership isn't enough? Kind of shoots the whole thing down, if they feel the need to take such a cut.

    Come on, MS. You sell Windows to countless businesses and governments across the planet, and you clearly are fleecing small game creators for no reason but greed and because you can.

    I have some cool game concepts I'd love to get onto Live, but this news and just listening to you guys is putting me off doing anything with them. Perhaps we should approach such endeavours not to make money but for the love of games.

    As for advertising of such games, it's clear we can't rely on MS here. There are ways to get your game notice for nothing, if you put your mind to it though.

  • toythatkills #28 2 years ago

    "I think its quite cheeky of MS to be taking a cut of such games. So basically, you are paying £/$100 for XNA memebership isn't enough?"

    Well no, not when the alternative is a cut of someone's revenue which works out around $40,000. And then everyone else's too.

  • fknetwork #29 2 years ago

    @ Stomp224
    I played it and.......

    VERY impressed!! a superb indie game that really does have the retro feel, the sounds are perfect too!
    Buying it shortly to show my support and already rated it 5 stars!

    My only concern though is I don't see any unlock or buy screens in the demo, you have to exit back to the dash then unlock it from there, hopefully people will know how to do that anyway so all should be fine!


    Go check it out people, download it and give it a play - http://ma rketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/...
    Edited by 1 at 27/01/10 @ 15:50

  • holloguts #30 2 years ago

    There are some good games on the Indie section. Avatar Golf (mentioned) is excellent, it comes with a few very good courses and also a course editor. You can share your courses with other users. When you create a course you can host a game for others to join and they can play your course without having to download the course itself. For 400 points it's a bargain. Another game I enjoy is Hoyle's Texas Poker, Its by the same samll company that created the arcade texas poker, but the indie version has much better AI (also 400 points).

    The point made about Microsoft charging for developers to create games on the 360 and taking a cut from the games profits. Microsoft do provide the programs for creating games for PC and the 360 FREE. You can develop a game for the PC and the 360 FREE. You only pay the annual charge if you join the XNA creators club to use the 360 for developing and debugging the game onthe 360. Because Microsoft make the development programs free and a 360 game can be developed on the PC there is no need to join the XNA club until you are certain that you can actually create the games in the first place. Develop on the PC then join XNA club when your game is complete.Consider that to create a game with other programming languages is costly, especially when you buy the program and find you really don't have what it takes after all. Microsoft let you find out before you pay anything.

  • Stomp224 #31 2 years ago

    @ fknetwork & Ryze

    Wow, thanks for the support! Glad somebody likes it :)