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Down voted since you apparently didn't read the article. The author specifically addresses Xbox Live Indies. Before I read the article I agreed but turns out t

Down voted since you apparently didn't read the article. The author specifically addresses Xbox Live Indies. Before I read the article I agreed but turns out there's a pretty solid point in there. It's funny how the consoles are racing towards this whole notion of the physical media doesn't matter when that seems to be precisely where consumers attribute the value.

mpclark 14y ago
Excellent point about consumers attributing value to things they can hold in their hands. The same is true of written content; in my experience information on paper is a lot easier to sell than the same information hosted on a website. The attraction of moving to digital media is clear (instant delivery, no overheads, easier to control copying etc) but consumers can be reluctant to pay for anything they can't touch.
brudgers 14y ago
The article true Scotsmanned the Xbox approach and the above comment rightly describes this with the phrase "not count". The article's arguments are severely undermined by the Xbox ecosystem and its dismissal by the author is intellectually lazy and his dismissive claim is unsupported within the piece.
- ido 14y ago
  As someone making his full time income from game development for the past several years, the common wisdom among developers is that there's a handful of commercially successful games on XBLIG (which is not the same as the much more successful XBLA) & that you can pretty much discount that as a profitable option if you intend on making a commercial indie game. It is simply a lot harder to make money on XBLIG than on Steam/app store/play market.
  - homosaur 14y ago
    As someone who has never touched XBLIG as a dev or XNA, why do most of the games on XBLIG look so horrible? Is it just a bad SDK from Microsoft or can they just not attract top end development talent?
    - ido 14y ago
      Low likelihood of profitability make putting a considerable budget behind an XBLIG game an irrational risk. Technically there is no reason you won't be able to make good looking games with xna (at least in 2d, not any worse than what you can get running on flash or iphone). The "top end" developers mostly go straight to XBLA.

mpclark 14y ago

Excellent point about consumers attributing value to things they can hold in their hands. The same is true of written content; in my experience information on paper is a lot easier to sell than the same information hosted on a website. The attraction of moving to digital media is clear (instant delivery, no overheads, easier to control copying etc) but consumers can be reluctant to pay for anything they can't touch.

brudgers 14y ago

The article true Scotsmanned the Xbox approach and the above comment rightly describes this with the phrase "not count". The article's arguments are severely undermined by the Xbox ecosystem and its dismissal by the author is intellectually lazy and his dismissive claim is unsupported within the piece.

ido 14y ago
As someone making his full time income from game development for the past several years, the common wisdom among developers is that there's a handful of commercially successful games on XBLIG (which is not the same as the much more successful XBLA) & that you can pretty much discount that as a profitable option if you intend on making a commercial indie game. It is simply a lot harder to make money on XBLIG than on Steam/app store/play market.
- homosaur 14y ago
  As someone who has never touched XBLIG as a dev or XNA, why do most of the games on XBLIG look so horrible? Is it just a bad SDK from Microsoft or can they just not attract top end development talent?
  - ido 14y ago
    Low likelihood of profitability make putting a considerable budget behind an XBLIG game an irrational risk. Technically there is no reason you won't be able to make good looking games with xna (at least in 2d, not any worse than what you can get running on flash or iphone). The "top end" developers mostly go straight to XBLA.