The Pending State

You might wonder what is saved when you click Save Draft. After you upload your game and its game-related information, the game is in a pending state. The pending state means that all the information you have uploaded, including the binary, may be changed.

For example, you may wish to upload a more representative screenshot, change your title, or fix a late-breaking bug and resubmit your .ccgame package. Essentially you are working on a draft of your game and release. When you are ready to submit your game to peer review, go to the project details page by editing the project and clicking the Submit For Review button.

Submitting a game for review is akin to shipping your game. This is an important step in the process. Submitting your game enables other creators to conduct a peer review. If your game passes peer review, it will be distributed to the world. Note that peer review is a process that takes at least 48 hours. It may run longer if folks are slow to review your game.

Because of this, we recommend you submit only games that you think are ready for prime time. In other words, get your user-testing and bug fixing done before you submit for review. Don’t use the peer review system as a quality assurance net to catch bugs. This frustrates the community, and it means you have to wait longer to get your game placed on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. We will reject games that are incomplete, don’t run properly, or have crippling bugs.

Only one release per platform and region is allowed “in the pipeline.” For example, while a game is in the pending state, you cannot add another release for the same region and platform to the same project. Furthermore, if you have a game in the review state, you cannot add another one in the pending state. Once a game passes peer review and gets moved into Xbox LIVE Marketplace, it is out of the submission pipeline, allowing you to add another release.

As with all Xbox 360 games, Xbox LIVE Marketplace stores only the latest version of your game. If you wish to update your game with a newer version, simply add a release to the same project. This newer game still needs to go through peer review. Once it passes the review process, it replaces the game currently on Xbox LIVE Marketplace.

For the beta, we will allow only two games to be in the pipeline across all of your projects.

Peer Review

Once you submit your game for review, the release moves to the review state. You cannot change your game or any game-related information while your game is in review. If you have a change of heart, you can remove the game from the review process by clicking Cancel on the game project details for that release. You must start the review process over when you resubmit for review.

Multiple reviews are required for a game to pass peer review. Once a game has a high enough “agree” score, it will pass peer review. Conversely, if a game has a high enough “disagree” score, it will be rejected. All reviewers are not created equal. Reviewers who review games accurately will increase their review reputation.

A review by a creator with a higher review reputation will hold more weight than a review by a less-experienced reviewer. From the system’s perspective, it is an agree-or-disagree review score that causes a game to get through the system, not a predefined number of reviews. That said, there will always be a minimum number of reviewers required to peer-review a game.

A Note on Our Philosophy

One of the most exciting aspects of community game distribution is that we do not manage the game portfolio. This means that we want consumers to decide which games to play, not Microsoft or the creator community. The game meets the bar for distribution if it has the appropriate content, runs without any “crashing” bugs, and is classified correctly.

The primary purpose of peer review is to ensure a safe experience for consumers who browse Xbox LIVE Marketplace, and then download and play a community game. Peer review determines whether the game has prohibited content. If the content is acceptable, peer review then confirms the game creator’s classification. Peer reviewers make no judgments whether the game is fun. A game’s entertainment quality is decided by the game players on the console through an explicit user-rating system and downloads.