I think its about time that I shared some of my game sales so far as well as some insights into the business of making games for xblig. Let's start of with some numbers. As of April 9, 2010 I have these stats to share.
Having these sales numbers is very humbling. I thought at first is that if I make a interesting and new game people will buy lots of it. But I think the sales of the game was hurt because of bad timing of the new 80 ms pt drop that I missed as well as having bad cover art. Gum Drop Celestial frontier took the longest to create of all my games, it took around 1 year from concept to a shippable product. I was also new to the XNA platform at that time which incurred a lot of research and learning. I did a fair amount of PR work with this game, and was able to get it on most XBLIG sites. However at that time most XBLIG sites were not mature and did not have alot of following.
The second game, Neo Terra faired better than Gum Drop Celestial Frontier, but it was still disappointing in terms of sales. This is also the first time I had someone else do the artwork for me in which I spent around $500 dollars for the artwork of the whole game. It took me 4 months to get this game out the door. I can also note that it went faster because I had known the platform alot better and have a collection of libraries that I could use to make my game. It also helped that I pretty much was trying to mirror galcon in terms of gameplay. Yes, I cloned galcon, but it was something I wanted to experiment at. I made a big mistake of not doing as much PR with Neo Terra, because I fooled myself thinking that this game is so awesome that people would play it. Neo Terra is also not easy to get into as you have to learn quite a few concepts to get to understand the game. However Neo Terra has gotten quite a second wind when I released the Zune HD version for free.
The third game, Impossible Shoota was a experiment in minimalist game creation. I took the chance to make something in a short amount of time (2 months) with the least amount of expense (only paid for 2 music tracks) to generate a big ROI. I knew in my heart this game was more like a feasibility study if I could seriously make games for a living as a indie game developer. Thankfully the numbers have drastically improved since my first two games. However I am still unable to pinpoint why this was more successful than the previous two. Although I have theories as to why this is the case. First of all this game is a straight up twin stick shooter with a very basic premise, shoot and dodge. Secondly, I think the cover art was a bit more telling as to what the game is, it's a giant fighter ship that says impossible shoota, I think most gamers would understand what it is by just looking at it. I did email a couple of folks about Impossible Shoota to drum up some attention. Most XBLIG sites picked it up, and I was lucky enough to get into the IGN top picks in the Xbox 360 channel which helped with my sales.
Lastly, my newest game in production Scribble Defense is planned to be sold at the middle price point. This is more attributing to a higher offering, giving gamers a few hours of gameplay for the price of around $2.50. I am hoping that people will more likely to buy the game based on the game content, and some interesting game mechanics. Currently I am at 2 months time in the game with around 1-2 more months of development. Hopefully this combination/theme will produce better reviews as well as higher sales.
To summarize my experiences in with XBLIG, I would say that it is definitely a hits driven business. You have to command the attention of people and make them want to play your game. This can be achieved by doing something crazy, new, innovative, etc... Basically whatever it takes to make journalists, and players take notice. However not because you think you have the most awesome game means that people will take notice, and play it. So it is very important to get yourself out there do it.