But… but… but… I Thought the PC Games Were Dead?!?!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 20, 2011

Apparently not.

Zeboyd PC Sales Leave XBLIG In the Dust.

A short excerpt from a short article: “In less than a week on Steam, Zeboyd’s Cthulhu Saves The World and Breath Of Death VII have already made more than they did in over a year on Xbox Live Indie Games. Let me repeat that: More in under a week on PC than in over a year on Xbox.”

Yeah. Dang it, now our little secret is out…

Filed Under: Indie Evangelism - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Bad Sector said,

Well, i think it has more to do about how when it comes to marketing and promotions Microsoft shoves indie games under the carpet while Valve treats them on equal footing as AAA games than the platform’s popularity 😛
Califer said,

Yeah, indie games are seriously hidden on the xbox. I tried to show my cousin about them but couldn’t figure out where they were.
Menigal said,

But, why would companies making games that sell for sometimes twice as much on console compared to the PC keep lying to us?
BellosTheMighty said,

Uh, PC Games ARE dead.

…

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Zombie industry! SHOTGUN! SHOTGUN! My kingdom for a shotgun!
Mart said,

Of course, PC Gaming is dying! It’s been dying for the past 4.3 billion years now..
Xian said,

I think Bad Sector nailed in with the first post. I often see Indie games on Steam front and center right beside a AAA title. They get the exposure on Steam, and get buried on XBLA.
Rampant Coyote said,

I doubt that is the whole story, but I am sue that it is a significant factor. I think that can explain an awful lot of the so-called “decline” in PC gaming as well… it hasn’t had a champion, like the hardware platforms have had.
LateWhiteRabbit said,

@Rampant

Microsoft seems to treat indies badly, mainly by flat out ignoring them. They even renamed the “Indie Games” section of Xbox Live to “Community Games”, and it is the community of indie developers on Live that decide whether or not a new comer’s game gets put on the service.

Factor in that it also has a bad case of horrible little one-off games that bury everything beneath them (like popular ‘massage’ games that utilize the vibration of the game controller for . . . uh, purposes). Also, it only takes 1 or 2 negative votes to keep a game off of Live, so the community can be very crooked, either ramming through friends games that are crap, or vindictively preventing a game from being released by just voting ‘no’ on it – and then the developer has to wait a month to try again.

Microsoft refuses to mediate or resolve disputes either – copied games, poor community practices or actions, they don’t care.

Indie games on the Xbox are like “Lord of the Flies” writ large in digital form. You may get metaphorically stabbed to death because your game is crap, or you receive the same if a jealous developer thinks your game is too good or might compete with their own.

Just read the story of Super Meat Boy’s team experience with Microsoft. Horrible and depressing and with next to no payoff on the platform, then massive success on . . . PC.

Putting your game on Live is like self-publishing a book and having a few copies put on a back self of a back room in an independent bookstore.

Putting your game on Steam is like getting a major publisher for a book, having it released at major book retailers, and knowing it will sit in massive piles on a front table with giant signs for at least a week.

I honestly don’t know why developers bother with Live at all. I have yet to hear a positive indie story about it. Most only talk about the soul-crushing difficultly of getting the game on Live, only for it to slip into obscurity within a day or so.

These people know they can just as easily use those XNA development tools to support 360 controllers and achievements on the PC platform, right?
Megabyte said,

According to a friend of mine who works on XNA games in his spare time, you need to wait up to 6 months before you actually see money from the sale of a game. Still, Steam is a much better way to promote a game like Cthulu Saves the World