Xbox LIVE Community Games

By: Derek Yu

On: July 24th, 2008

New details about Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE Community Games service were released this week. Community Games allows members of the XNA Creators Club ($99/year) to sell games on XBLA after going through a peer review system.

Here are some of the important details:

– No free games! Developers using the service must charge 200 to 800 points for their games ($2.50 to $10).

– How much you charge is partially determined by your games’s file size! “Creators can chose to sell their 50 MB games for 200 Microsoft Points, or sell their larger 150 MB games for either 400 or 800 Microsoft Points.”

– Creators will receive 70% of the revenue as a baseline, although Microsoft may choose to “invest” in certain games and deduct 10-30% revenue during that time, in exchange for special promotion of the game on the console and on Xbox.com. “Certified” XBLA developers are now (as far as we know) receiving 35-45% revenue as a baseline, by comparison.

– Each game that gets sold will have a “free timed trial” built in by the system (i.e. the developer doesn’t have to rig the trial him or herself).

– The service is in beta right now, with about 60 active games (including a “musical game for babies?!”). It’s going to launch in the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe in early 2009.

So they’re opening up the platform like Apple did with the iPod/iPhone, except that the community decides which games will sell and which games won’t. Other than the questionable file size/price thing, that sounds pretty reasonable to me!

There’s a walkthrough of the service from February on Gamasutra.

(Thanks, arrogancy!)