Boyd: Spotty Results For XBL Indie Games Winter Uprising Promotion

Promotion creator and indie developer Robert Boyd said the Indie Games Winter Uprising event for the Xbox 360's peer-reviewed Indie Games section has seen only mixed success, thanks partly to troubles with Microsoft's submission process for the service. The Uprising, announced last month, sought higher visibility for 14 XNA-based indie games from notable developers, planned for release on Microsoft's Xbox Live service on a set schedule during the first week in December. But only eight of the planned games are currently available Xbox Live, a situation Boyd told Edge Online is partly due to technical problems with the submission process. “The way Xbox Live Indie Games are set up, it’s difficult to release on a specific day,” he said. “You can’t get your game approved and have it come out later at a day of your choosing – once a game is approved it goes up automatically within 48 hours." "Likewise, if you submit a game for approval and then find that you have to pull it for whatever reason, however small, you have to wait a minimum of seven days before resubmitting.” Of the Uprising titles release so far, Boyd told Edge that Eyehook's Epic Dungeon has performed the best, with 6,000 sales in 10 days. Other Uprising games have not fared so well, Boyd said, with about 400 sales for Break Limit, and even fewer for titles such as Asteroids Do Concern Me and Ubergridder. A Gamasutra analysis of Xbox Live Indie Game sales in 2009 found only two titles selling over 100,000 copies, though games that reached the service's top 20 sellers achieved five-to-six-figure grosses for their developers.