Well, as the title suggests, I’m currently developing Tribes of Mexica as an XNA game. Considering the somewhat poor sales of XNA titles, this might seem a bit perplexing. After all, no matter how much one enjoys creating games, it’s nice to get paid as well.
So why did I choose to go with XNA?
Well, a couple of reasons, actually:
- An XNA game is pretty much guaranteed to be released, and consequently to make some money. This might be a small consolation, but it’s hard to get any guarantees in the world of publishing.
- Although I’ve sporadically developed PC stuff, most of my professional career has revolved around very limited devices, i.e., mobiles/handhelds. The Xbox 360 is a beast by comparison, and XNA’s entry cost is about as low as it can get. The alternative is licensing a professional dev kit, which can be quite pricey and time consuming (and never a guaranteed thing). With XNA, registration is done online and only costs $99 USD.
- The recently renamed Indie Games Marketplace is based on self-publishing, which means that you get to retain your IP and all the rights to your creation. If it flops, no one will stop you from tweaking it and porting it to another system.
- Aside from CarnyVale Showtime, Microsoft hasn’t really promoted XNA games that much. Now most of them (at least as of right now), are pretty rubbish, so that’s not really surprising. The option for future promotions is still there, though, and the upcoming ratings system might help as well. Regardless of all that, having your game available on Xbox Live! is still a great source of exposure for a brand new developer.
- Another possible reason why promotions haven’t been that prevalent is that the best XNA games have a tendency to make their way onto Xbox Live Arcade, e.g., Schizoid and The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. Publishers seem to be keeping a keen eye on these titles and have shown a willingness to support XNA developers.
- DreamBuildPlay is a good exhibition of XNA games, and has some nice prizes to boot.
- There are 200+ games available on XNA right now, and although that might seem like a lot, it’s not nearly as many titles as there are on the oversaturated iPhone App Store. The opportunity to make a game that stands out and gets attention is still quite good, and things will probably stay that way at least for a little while longer.
The shady god Tezcatlipoca, one of the pivotal characters in Tribes of Mexica.
Next Tribes of Mexica post.
Previous Tribes of Mexica post.
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Hi, my name’s Radek Koncewicz, and I work as a videogame design consultant. I'm also the creative lead of
#1 by dog_spawn on June 15, 2009 - 5:19 pm
Coding to Microsoft standards seems like a bad idea if you know your computing history.
#2 by booltox on June 16, 2009 - 1:45 pm
The article doesn’t make a strong case for XNA development. Microsoft really needs to increase their support of the platform in terms of exposure. The sales numbers for the few good games on there are rather dismal. But given that the platform is not making a lot of money, it is still a nice tool set to work with. Microsoft definitely knows how to make good development tools.
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
#3 by NitroPye on June 16, 2009 - 2:19 pm
I disliked XNA’s tie into VisualStudio. I found it very difficult to work outside of the VS environment and get anything done. I had to learn two things, XNA and the VisualStudio workflow. I felt like a fish out of water. Other then that it was a pretty cool little toolkit that did a lot for you out of the box. If anything XNA is great for proof-of-concept "is this idea fun?" stuff.
This comment was originally posted on Reddit
#4 by Steve on June 17, 2009 - 5:12 pm
I’d urge you to reconsider…
#5 by otakucode on June 24, 2009 - 9:54 am
I hope you are able to keep your game in the Indie Games Marketplace and still make a significant amount of money. I hate to see talented developers or their products swallowed up by publishers. Instead of the money the game earns going to support the creator and further development from their talented mind, almost all of the money from each purchase is fed into the extreme inefficiencies of the publishing company. Executives who contribute very little to the value of the products offered by the company eat up almost all of it, leaving only scraps for the trapped developer, who no longer gets to pursue his own projects but is instead yolked by a manager whose primary goal in life is to make sure that anything the developer does, it looks like the managers idea. Getting snapped up by a publisher might seem like a great opporunity, but the only person who benefits from it, especially in the long run, is the people suckling off of the inefficiencies of the publishing company. I’d much rather see a single developer turn out a popular game and make enough bank to live off of for a couple years at the very least, and anything significantly viral should set them up for life. The chances that gamers will get better games in the future is vastly improved if the developer can support himself without being chained to a desk in a publishers office.
#6 by Jesús Bosch on August 1, 2009 - 3:32 am
I absolutely agree with you. Good article.