XBLA’s Braid Needs More Sales

XBLA offers great opportunities for the indy developer but everything comes at a price. Over the last three years Braid‘s developer Jonathan Blow spent a reported $180,000 to create the popular Braid title on Xbox Live. He’s going to need a lot more sales before he can celebrate the highly valued, highly reviewed title.

The Independent Games Festival was kind to him, giving him the “Innovation in Game Design” back in 2006, since then he’s put his money where is mouth is; his own money. There are good times and bad times when you’re discovering your dreams. The reviews surely made him feel great about the work he has done over the last three years but a review won’t pay the bills.

It may be a hard road ahead for Jonathan, hopefully at least breaking even on the project. Although he may not look back at the game as a financial success we can only imagine he’ll have a lot easier time getting funding or publishing for his next title, if that’s the path he chooses.

(Thanks, Kotaku)

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Episode 368: Black Friday ApproachesEpisode 368: Black Friday Approaches

As Black Friday approaches, Jonah and Paul discuss this week’s news after an absence. No Devin this week, as well as no Gaming Flashback or Gaming History. Paul loses it on the last news item, too.

As for the news:

  • Just Cause 3 announced for PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2015
  • Nintendo talks third party, holiday strategy
  • Dev: It’s tougher to develop for kids than core gamers
  • Intel resumes advertising with Gamasutra
  • Xbox One sales triple following $349 promotion
  • World of Warcraft hit with DDoS attack as new expansion launches
  • Carbine: Redundancies are “part of game development”

The Question of the Week: “When did you first start buying games digitally?”

Will Xbox Live Survive 2008 Holiday Stress?Will Xbox Live Survive 2008 Holiday Stress?

This year many gamers will open new consoles for the holidays and many of those same gamers are going bring their console “live” on Xbox Live the same day. Traditionally we’ve found Xbox Live falls under the weight of the holiday rush much like Apple’s iTunes. Will we repeat history again?

Although a fully loaded Xbox Live service is money in the bank, how much money will Microsoft lose when gamers login for the first time to a service in a state of destruction? People say first impressions are extremely important, but Microsoft makes a poor first impression every holiday. Xbox Live’s Jerry Johnson told Eurogamer:

“I can tell you that when Robbie Bach is on the phone on Christmas Day calling people asking what the hell is going on, and that’s coming down from Steve Ballmer… that’s the kind of attention it got last holiday.

Many things have changed since then, and we realised [sic] the kind of growth trajectory we were on and had to prepare for it.” (Kotaku)

It’s obvious the top executives at Microsoft want to give customers a great first impression and, after a few repeated holiday down times, this year is the chance to change it all. By now, Microsoft should be fully aware of the holiday flash crowd and have a system ready to cover the load.

Plenty of gamers login because their console automatically signs in on startup, but a handful of those gameres will be shopping for Xbox Live Arcade games to see what Microsoft is now offering them and their new console. Many XBLA games the current 360 crowd is bored of will be fresh and new to holiday adopters so it’s very important to keep the system online.

Much like Amazon, sales will decrease when the service is busy or under heavy load. Hopefully Microsoft is ready to make a great first impression to new buyers and give them the option to buy high valued (high markup) electronic downloads.

60GB Xbox 360 Rumor Flows60GB Xbox 360 Rumor Flows

The current rumor is “later this month” Microsoft will announce a 60GB model of the Xbox 360 and phase out the old 20GB product line. This was intercepted (read: leaked) from an e-mail Microsoft sent to gamestop and Blockbuster, so you can only take it as “rumor” until a real announcement.

This new SKU would make the gap between 20GB (small) and the 120GB (big) smaller, allowing for consumers to pick a product in the middle without spending needless cash on the 120GB version. The larger disk is great for media downloads, movie rentals on Xbox Live, but for the typical gamer it might be a bit over-done. However, with Rock Band and Guitar Hero having downloadable content (DLC) having 20GB is getting harder each month.

The e-mail went on to say that stand-alone purchase of the 60GB hard disk would retail for $99.99. Great news, unless you recently purchased a full priced 20GB disk. The 120GB disk would also reduce by $30.00 in response.

Believe it or not, it’s a rumor that continues to flow from multiple sources. Undoubtedly Microsoft is going to deny anything about it until they actually want to announce it.

(Thanks, 1up)