Xbox live arcade probably is good for indie developers
10 days ago I wrote that Xbox Live Arcade is great for developers. Since then Jeff Tunnell from Garage Games has written a post on his blog giving some more information, and hinting at figures and used Marble Blast Ultra as an example.
He wouldn’t say how much it cost to develop, but hinted at between $100,000 and $300,000 as an average cost and then stated
I can’t give the exact figure, but the Marble Blast Ultra budget was at the higher end of the current budget range.
I’ve never known how much of the cash was spilt between Microsoft and the developer, but that seems to be based on the amount of work/help on the part of Microsoft.
“The publicly available information on this is that the distribution fees for bringing a game to XBLA is 35 to 70 percent, depending upon participation by [Microsoft]“
That’s 35-70% of the profit going to Microsoft, a much larger scale than I had anticipated.
Anyway, it’s a good read, so pop on over and have a look.