Xbox Live Arcade Developer Not Sold On Community Games Program

The excitement around Community Games on Xbox Live, an avenue for indie developers to make money off their games, has softened in recent weeks, causing indie studios working on XBL Arcade to question the program's viability.

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With Xbox 360 Community Games sales data continuing to be a mystery, it's difficult to gauge whether Microsoft's ambitious service has been a success. There are quality games to be found there, but the question is whether they can make any money.

This week, independent developer Twisted Pixel Games is debuting on Xbox Live Arcade with "The Maw," a "Katamari Damacy"-influenced action game with a cute-meets-slightly-disturbing art style.

"The Maw" comes from an indie studio, so I wondered whether Twisted Pixel had ever considered Community Games as an outlet for "The Maw."

"'The Maw' got greenlit for XBLA before we started full production in Oct 2007," Twisted Pixel CEO and software engineer Michael Wilford told me over e-mail. "We may develop for Community Games at some point, but XBLA is very successful partly because it is a closed and tightly managed portfolio of games. Thankfully we seem to have a healthy relationship with Microsoft and I hope we get to continue down the XBLA path."

You can't really blame Wilford for wanting to stay on the XBL Arcade track simply due to the ensured visibility games in that program receive around the Internet and on the 360's dashboard. Working in Community Games means there's less oversight from Microsoft. That's not appealing enough to Wilford, at least not yet.

"I like the looks of the business model," he said, "but Community Games face[s] the same problem PC web portals do, which is an open platform and an overabundance of not-so-stellar games. [That] leads to low conversion rates. If we got more information from other indie devs then that might change things. But more than likely [if we worked in Community Games] we would dabble first and if it worked out then we'd consider going bigger scope."

Until we have sales data, set for release in two months, it's hard for anyone to make any judgments about Community Games and its future. For developers wondering whether it's all worth it, March can't come soon enough.

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