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GAMING NEWS

Xbox 360 Still Burying Indie Games

Posted on Monday, February 6 @ 13:37:20 Eastern by


I have been thoroughly enamored by Lexiv, an Indie Game that I purchased only several days ago. I haven't been able to put the game down since; it combines my interest in Scrabble with Sim City and a touch of turret tower defense. But I only downloaded Lexiv because I had gaming wanderlust and decided to venture into the Indie Game section.

Kris Steele of Fun Infused Games, the developer behind some solid indie titles such as Hypership and Abduction Action, is frustrated by the Xbox 360's lack of featured space for indie titles in the new dashboard update. On his blog, he claims that this is the reason for Hypership Still Out of Control's poor trial numbers. Since he only has numbers of his own games, though, this conclusion isn't convincing enough, but he does make a keen observation:
Ultimately I do not believe the XBLIG market is growing... I believe the biggest factor is Microsoft's burying of XBLIG.

Some of my games were picked up and promoted in IGN.com / Kotaku lists which did help. In most instances this was after a week so the list effect is minimal. Hypership Still Out of Control is currently on Kotaku’s list for the past 2 days. I can likely attribute 5 to 10 sales from my spot on this list over the past two days. This list on previous dashes did much more to help game sales.
It does take a bit of digging to get to the indie game section, but what's more telling is that Indie Games are not listed in the New Arrivals category or Genre sections. Meanwhile, Arcade titles flourish there. I believe that in terms of supporting independent developers, most gamers simply favor Arcade titles, which have a higher chance of living up to the hype, and view the Indie Game section as second-tier. It's understandable, though Indie Games should be given more exposure in relevant search results.


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Comments
  • drathbone
    drathbone

    Joined: May 2011
    Posted: Feb 6th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
    If they didn't list Arcade games on the new release I couldn't find them. I dunno how to look at arcade titles now, let alone indie.
  • Chunibrow
    Chunibrow

    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posted: Feb 6th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
    One problem is so many indie games are terrible. I've played a few, and for every good one worth promoting there are too many that are not. Maybe Microsoft could compromise: tighter quality control for indie games on XBLA in exchange for more promotion and easier access to the ones they let through.
  • LawnGnome
    LawnGnome

    Joined: Apr 2007
    Posted: Feb 6th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
    I can find the indie section just fine, and even stumbled upon it the other day while looking at new releases. I think that this is another case of developers blaming everyone else for bad sales or reviews. Instead of them blaming a bad review on "You guys just don't know how to play my game", this guy is blaming bad sales on "You guys don't know how to sale my game". Keep complaining, gamers respond to it real well.
  • warmaster670
    warmaster670

    Joined: Jun 2007
    Posted: Feb 6th, 2012 at 7:59 pm
    no surprise the new dashboard sucks balls, its a shame because theres decent indies out there, and the nice part is you can usually tell at least somewhat just by the cover/name whether its gonna be real ass or not, then trials for them are tiny so its easy to try them out.

    They need to get rid of the crappy DRM on indie games though, at least AFAIK they still require an XBL connection to play which makes no sense.

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