XBLA Exposed
7-Oct-2008
When Xbox Live Arcade was first revealed to the world at E3 2004, it didn't draw much interest. The big news was EA finally supporting XBox Live; the ability to buy classic arcade titles and card games online didn't seem nearly as exciting as online Burnout.
But four years later, XBLA is now a dedicated publishing channel that's increasingly being used to deliver brand new games. It's seen over 45 million downloads and taken over £170 million in exchange. By the end of this year, it's going to be taking on TV gameshows with Xbox Live Primetime, and bringing in the next generation of game developers with homebrow Community games.
Not bad, considering that Microsoft created it largely to appeal to people who didn't want to play full-length Xbox games.
"I think we were surprised that it really captured the hearts and minds of the casual gaming fan, and that also spread across hardcore gamers, a broad audience," says Robin Burrowes, marketing manager for XBLA UK and Ireland. "The games themselves don't take long to download, and they give a bit of instant gratification, in terms of Achievements for some people, or the sheer thrill of playing a game that you grew up playing, either on older consoles or in the arcade itself."
In the early planning for XBLA before the release of the Xbox 360, Microsoft approached numerous developers for titles that would fit well with the accessible 'casual' philosophy of the service - including classic cartoon-y multiplayer game Worms. "I was blown away by Arcade when it first came out," says Martyn Brown, Studio Director of Team 17. "It was the first system that felt fully integrated - you didn't have to put yourself online, you WERE online. That for me was XBLA's massive difference. So, for us, we've done a lot of social online games, and XBLA was a perfect match for Worms."
The first stage for any developer getting a game onto XBLA, involves a submission form where you discuss items such as the genre and content of your game, what languages you're going to translate it into, and a description of a walkthrough of one of the levels in the game. "Microsoft is very conscious of having a portfolio," continues Brown, "so every title has to justify its existence - they don't want to have ten Geometry Wars. That involves a few months of questioning, presentations and all the rest - very similar to what you'd be doing when you pitch with a normal publisher. It's slightly easier because, generally the costs are a lot lower."
Small scale
Once that's done, a developer will begin pre-production with teams ranging from just a couple of people to over 20, depending on the project, and once they're satisfied they go into full production, which can take anything from a year to 18 months. "But that involves quite a long tail end, including testing and submission," adds Brown. "And that last process can take four to six months. I think we were ready to go with Worms HD in October 2006, but after all the testing shenanigans we eventually launched March 2007."
Introversion Software, who is currently working on bringing its award-winning Darwinia and Multiwinia games to XBLA in the form of Darwinia+, has experienced how difficult the process of actually getting a game onto the service can be. "Once Microsoft had approved our game, we were negotiating a contract through an agent, and it took a full year to sort out," says managing director Mark Morris. "Microsoft has extremely strict technical certification requirements that you have to get right. One of the biggest challenges is that your game has got to be playable on a 14-inch CRT television. So you have to do all this visibility work in case someone is playing it on a composite cable through a TV, to make sure they can still read all of the text and tell exactly what's going on."
The Halo connection
Another problem Introversion encountered was moving from PC game development to working on a console with a controller pad. "Microsoft basically said that Darwinia was a bit clunky and confusing and that we needed to do some more design work to make a really strong Xbox 360 game. We were absolutely knocked sideways because what we really didn't want to get into was an open-ended interactive phase where they morphed Darwinia into something it isn't - 'could you put little smiley faces on the Darwinians' or something! However, what actually happened was Microsoft devoted a really large amount of resources to helping us, specifically bringing in the usability guy from Halo 3 and providing direct and very useful feedback on what we could do to improve the game - all things that we completely agree with.
They often stress that 'it's not our game, it's your game - we don't want to interfere with the gameplay', and now because of this work, when Darwinia+ eventually comes out on XBLA, it's going to be significantly better than what we were going to put out there initially."
Rare, home of Banjo-Kazooie, Conker and Joanna Dark, is now part of Microsoft Game Studios, and many of the team were keen to get involved with Xbox Live Arcade. "Most of the games we work on take years of development, and the asset management and the scale and budget of these things is enormous," says musician Steve Burke. "But Jetpac Refuelled was very much a labour of love for all of the people who worked on it. We're lucky at Rare that we're such a large developer - a more indie developer might not have been able to afford to do that."
So why does the legendary British company believe that some games on XBLA are huge successes while others fall by the digital wayside? "I think some of the misses on XBLA have come about when the people who are making them haven't thought about the actual people wanting XBLA games," replies Senior Software Engineer Nick Burton.
"You look at the things that are hits and a few are definite nostalgia trips, or they're a game that people really like to play, such as card games. But sometimes games are just a little too 'out there' for people..." Burke coughs and whispers "Space Giraffe...", but Burton quickly admonishes his enthusiastic colleague. "Don't say that! I like Space Giraffe. But I think it's really difficult for them to break out past the people who really want to play those kinds of games. Whereas I go, 'Yeah, a hardcore shooter - bring it on!' somebody else who might be looking for something specific, especially a 12-year-old kid, might be, 'what the hell is this?'"
Keep it catchy
Bill Dugan, president of Torpex Games (creators of Schizoid), believes that much of the success or failure of an XBLA title simply depends on great gameplay. "A great many games in the disc-based world are based on IP - you buy it because it's a Batman game and you like Batman. What the game is actually like is secondary. The wonderful thing about downloadable games is that everything's based on the trial - because everyone can download it for free, and play it for five minutes. If the game is junk they just won't buy it."
Xbox Live Arcade has always seemed like a good deal for indie developers and games companies wanting to bring their games to a wider audience, as the costs for making the games are significantly lower than major titles. "For a full-price retail game, the margin between success and failure is thin and brutal, as only two to three per cent of games released are highly successful, and probably 80 per cent of those don't actually recoup their money back," says Brown. "It's as profitable for us doing cheaper games on Xbox Live Arcade as it is doing retail - in most cases we'd probably earn a little bit more. So gamers are winning by getting lower-priced titles and we're getting paid more."
The details of just how the cost of an XBLA game is broken down are murky, because Microsoft doesn't discuss deals it makes with third parties. As part of the deal, the company does provide important and essential services to help the developers as part of the deal - such as usability testing - and it takes a cut to pay for them. But recently smaller developers have been complaining that the system has been changed.
Independents say
"With the royalty rates as they are, none of us could ever make enough money to be viable," comments Raigan Burns, vice president of Metanet, creators of the superbly violent ninja platformer N+. "We're not really looking to Live Arcade right now unless that changes. If you want to gamble and count on the fact that your game is going to sell much better than other games then you could break even, maybe, but it's just not an appetising proposition at the moment. Unless you get a 500,000 seller, you're screwed - it's really ruined our business model."
Introversion's Mark Morris agrees: "XBLA was very indie-friendly at the start. It was basically, 'we're not going to give you any money upfront, you fund all of it, but then you'll get the lion's share of the rewards downstream.' Then Microsoft did that bizarre royalty swap... and all of a sudden XBLA stops being an attractive platform to develop for. You can't take a risk any more because the returns they were talking about were just too low."
Happy ending
However, Morris is hopeful for the future. "Apparently they are now trying to adjust it and move it back in the right direction to encourage content. So that's a positive thing."
Microsoft's Robin Burrowes is also keen to confirm the company's desire to keep independent games coming. "We absolutely have a commitment to indie developers on XBLA - the service should be a fair and equal platform for games publishers, whether that's one person or a global company. Yes, there will be a criteria we'll have such as how the commercial operations work with that partner in terms of revenue share, but I guess that is where the mire of complexities exist. Inevitably not everyone will be satisfied that all those complexities meet the bottom line."
Royalties aside, most developers have good things to say about their experience creating XBLA games and working with Microsoft. And you can definitely look forward to a steady stream of new indie games later in the year with the arrival of Community games, developed by hobbyists and smaller companies with Microsoft and arriving with the launch of the new-look Xbox Live this autumn.
This will make it easier to browse and buy new games, and stop titles being lost in the huge list of existing releases. "There will be a more visual impact for Xbox Live Arcade titles that are coming, and games that we'll feature in a spotlight section," says Burrowes. "You'll get more of a pack-shot experience with a gallery approach, but you'll still be able to try the games before you buy them. We'll also bring more Microsoft Game Studios titles to XBLA, many more games from the XNA community and a lot of games that dovetail with the brand new Xbox experience, such as the Avatars."
Bright future
Microsoft's flagship game download service has been a massive, unprecedented success for the Xbox 360. It's increasingly a place where you can experience amazing games that you can't get anywhere else, like Geometry Wars Retro Evolved and Braid., as well as providing a home for re-releases like Bionic Commando Rearmed.
It's soon to become a proving ground for the developers of the future with the arrival of XNA community games enabling people to get started in the games industry on the cheap. And with some even more spectacular classic games on the way (including the mighty Banjo-Kazooie) ready to overwhelm you with bucket-loads of nostalgia, it appears that Xbox Live Arcade has a future more glittering than any seaside coin-op emporium could ever hope for.
