At $1, a game is an impulse buy, and I have bought many games for my iPhone following that exact impulse. But I feel like I'm buying a real game, not just a limited demo. I think we all would be upset at paying for a demo.

So what is the price for a "real" game? For $1 do I expect days of fun, or am I happy with a few hours?

I think that depends on the game and the player. Lets not fall into the trap of pricing games only on how much effort it took to make it. Yes we all want to earn a fair wage for our efforts, but lets focus on making great games, a great gaming experience and the rest will follow.

Lets keep in mind that for $10 I watch a movie for only 2+ hours and if I want to watch it again, I have to pay an additional $10.

I talk all about this stuff in my blog....

http://aboutmakinggames.blogspot.com/

Mac

For $1 I'd expect 10 or 20 minutes of *maybe* fun.

The whole $1 game thing creeping into xna saddens me a bit. But I see that I'm in the minority. It just seems like, as a developer, you have to work harder for shrinking profits. I guess it's great for the consumer though.

It would have been nice to see an interview with the creator of the popular $10 game "EzMuze+" From what we've seen thus far it is the highest grossing Indie Game thus far on the service; obviously the $10 pricetag has much to do with that. It has been the service's biggest success story, which is funny because with MS's new pricing scheme this success may be hard to duplicate.

While I believe that 400pts is the ideal target pricepoint for Indie developers (for multiple reasons including limiting one's time investment), I didn't see any benefit in removing the option of 800pts.

It's easy to argue that most XNA developed Indie games thus far are not worth $10, but that is forgetting a very important fact...some of the most ambitious XNA projects are being created for the 2009 Dream Build Play Competition. These titles, I'd argue, will be some of the most polished and content packed titles on the service. Last year's DBP brought up some great titles like Blow, CarneyVale: Showtime, Weapon of Choice, etc....and I expect this year's competition to bring even bigger titles (it's the nature of these sorts of competitions, the quality of entries increase over the years).

Some of these developers may have justified in putting the effort and time into their game by hoping to sell the game after the competition was over. Perhaps some were considering to sell the game for $10?

It's also interesting to contrast this to the PC where you have popular Indie Games like AudioSurf and World of Goo selling from $10+. One argument is that if any XNA Indie dev does make a title worth $10 then MS would surely publish it for XBLA. But we have to ask ourselves...would MS have published EzMuze+? Likely not.

To me it seems a little too early in the life of this service (been less than a year) for MS to remove that price point. Especially when you consider that the more ambitious projects are only now nearing the stages where they can be shown...it could screw over developers hoping to sell their game at that price point.

Matt Davis talks about MS having the "sales data" but that has nothing to do with restricting an option for developers. If anything, "sales data" show that 25% of 800pt games made over $35K. His point makes little sense.

There's a huge thread about this over on the developer forums for XBLIG, and a fair number of people are rather displeased about the elimination of the 800 point price point. Personally, I doubt the decision had anything to do with developers; I think Microsoft was trying to clearly segment their marketplace and eliminate any possible overlap between XBLIG and XBLA.

@Adam

I think that is the most likely reason. By having games priced at $10/800 points, you give the illusion that those games are going to be the same quality as XBLA games. That is something that Microsoft wants to avoid. Especially since XNA developers can set their own price.

Imagine if some moron kid priced his crap game for $10 and someone gets burned by it. They will have a distaste for the service and could very well not by ANY downloadable game from MS.

Personally, I think it should still be an option. There are some really great games available and many of them well worth $10.

Another issue that will leak over from the iPhone app store is the attitude buyers have towards the games. A $1 game is looked down upon, and by extension the people who develop it and the effort required are equally disrespected. Read some of the reviews of $1 games... if there's even a single bug the buyer is screaming for their dollar back. On $3 game reviews you see nonsense like "This game isn't worth $3, for that kind of money I expected 100 hours of gameplay, there's only 50 here!" That same amount of gameplay on a PC or console title would go for 40-50 dollars and be hailed as a bargain.

This from people who don't think twice about spending $5 for a liquefied Heath bar at Starbucks. Hypocrisy of the first order on the part of the buyer? Yes, but that's reality.

The problem with XBLIG is simply visibility. Most Xbox owners have no idea it's even there, and even if they do check it out, they have no basis upon which to make a decision. See above for the problem of pure buyer-reviews on cheap games... and there's no professional-grade reviews (ha!) on non-major games.

The App Store and XBLIG are ghettos, and unless there is a major shift in how they are presented and how indies are received, the games appearing there will automatically be devalued and disrespected by an ever-more-cynical market.

Over at the xna forums there is a thread about Dust: An Elysian. I brought up the point, how is this game going to be sold at less than 800 MS points? There is just no way. Unless it's like 30min long. Dust, in and of itself, is reason enough to keep the 800 price point. The mods erased my post. So much for free speech. I assume the developer is really aiming for XBLA.

And I agree with you Amir, what about apps like ezmuze that are worth 800 points, but don't have much of a chance to get on Live Arcade?

[quote]Imagine if some moron kid priced his crap game for $10 and someone gets burned by it. [/quote]

Every XBLIG can be downloaded as demo, and played for 8 minutes at a time. How likely is it that you think the game is worth $10 after playing it a few times for 8 minutes, and then after purchase you claim you're burned?

Personally, I think the main problem of XBLIG is that there's too much crap downing out the good stuff. A user ratings system is sorely needed (and will eventually show up).

Given the quality of games the new prices are appropriate. EzMuze sold because it was different, not because of its quality. Personally I think it was overpriced at 800.

Given that MS can adjust the possible prices at any time, maybe if developers start creating decent games instead of massage clone crap and slideshows, they'll allow a higher price. The number of quality titles can be counted on my fingers and I'd have some left over. Most of the people complaining there are not ones that used one of those fingers.

@Derek - your post was deleted because it was off topic for the thread and obviously designed to start an argument. If you'd posted in the proper place it wouldn't have been a problem.

I dont write posts to start arguments.

"Matt Davis talks about MS having the "sales data" but that has nothing to do with restricting an option for developers. If anything, "sales data" show that 25% of 800pt games made over $35K. His point makes little sense."

Actually Amir, you just proved my point. Where did you get your information that 25% of 800pt games made over $35k??? ...because that statement is factually incorrect.

The context of my statement was about the distaste for the lower price points but I can see your logic in applying my statement to the loss of the 800 price point. Fair enough.

Personally, after having put out a game at 800pts that received excellent reviews, I'm not going to miss the 800 price point and neither are many of the other developers that priced at 800 and eventually moved down to 400 after sales data became available...wink, wink.

With that said, at first glance I don't see why they had to get rid of it altogether but I'm sure they had their reasons:

"Indie Games will have three price points to choose from, to keep them more in-line with other products available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace."

http://creators.xna.com/en-US/news/newfeatures_s14

That to me says that they have looked at the data and found out xbox live consumers value indie games about as much as a virtual q-tip or RC Warthog. :(

Of course, I'd certainly understand why someone would want the 800 price point and I would never argue with a reason against it.

All price points need to stay around. A person can't say they were burnt after playing the demo. Then chose to spend $$$ on it. With a user rating system, the price could adjust according to how its rated every so many comments.

I don't know that rating games based on comments is a good idea. That would give people to spam "this game sucks" so they can play games cheaply.

Matt Davis said: "Actually Amir, you just proved my point. Where did you get your information that 25% of 800pt games made over $35k??? ...because that statement is factually incorrect."

Actually, that number came from the developer himself.

We don't have all of the numbers, but we can safely say that "at least" 25% of games made over X amount. If you want to factor all games that were 800pts in the lifetime of the service that number would drop to 10%, still an excellent percentage that I highly doubt the other price points would match. The fact that MS has all the numbers doesn't change what we do know to be fact, that the 800pt price point isn't a barrier for consumers.

Jim Perry said: "Given the quality of games the new prices are appropriate. EzMuze sold because it was different, not because of its quality. Personally I think it was overpriced at 800."

I think this is the main problem. Not many of the developers respect the highest selling products, mainly because they do not understand why they are selling. Developers consider it overpriced...despite the fact that it the highest grossing Indie game we know of. Obviously consumers think different.

High quality traditional games aren't selling at 800pts, 400pts or 200pts...but music creation software, rumble "massage" apps, HD screensavers and the like are selling at ANY price point.

There seems to be a general failure on the part of developers to understand what the audience wants. What worries me about MS's move here is that they are in the same boat. A developer, one who understands exactly what sort of product to make to cater to this audience, is now restricted and cannot sell it at a price that consumers would gladly pay.

Again I think 400pts is the ideal price point for many reasons, but I feel for the developers who have great proven products that can sell at higher points.

While there are a number of very good points made above, I think that many are confusing what is ultimately a business decision, with the impact of that decision on the developers of community games. As one poster pointed out, ONLY Microsoft know ALL the sales information on now-titled XBLIG. As such, any quibbling as to the sales ratios of various price points is without purpose.

Rather, we should focus on the business rationale of this decision, as some posters have done. Microsoft is a) professionalizing the XBLIG via the name change (which used to elicit a hobby-ish tone) and b) rationalizing that marketplace with the totality of content available through Xbox Live (from games to 'vitural qtips' to movie rentals). Such pricing decisions are typically made to differentiate products based on their respective 'value.' (a point raised by an earlier poster)

Note, and this is important, we are talking about value to a customer, NOT the value of the product to its producer. You don't price cheese based on how much is cost to make, you price is according to what the market will bare. Here the market obviously has not proven to be able to bare much 800MSP games in the XBLIG. It is for this reason that it costs more to get an automatic car than a manual one, even though they cost the same to produce. It's all about the perception of value by the customer.

One final note on success stories. They don't matter. Okay, so they matter a little bit, but only as interesting examples of how success is possible. They are, in most cases, not replicable. So while EzMuse may have done well, there is no evidence to suggest that any other game will have similar success. As they say in stats class: "an 'n' of one does not a trend make."

So to conclude, Microsoft did not make this decision for the development community, nor do they really care is the development community gets paid. In fact, they have no real interest in having the improving development community unless it shows signs that it is unable to produce quality product (which I can't forsee, given the large number of very talented people and companies plugging away on great IP). Instead, this is an effort by Microsoft to increase ALL sales of virtual goods by rationalizing their marketplace. And in the end, a strong XBLive marketplace is advantageous to all developers (a bigger pie, and whatnot).

Amir Said:"We don't have all of the numbers, but we can safely say that "at least" 25% of games made over X amount. If you want to factor all games that were 800pts in the lifetime of the service that number would drop to 10%"

Why would you not factor in all original 800pt games? The fact that many original 800pt games are now 240pt games is very telling in itself.

"We don't have all of the numbers, but we can safely say that "at least" 25% of games made over X amount."

Show me your statistics on how you can safely come to such a conclusion.

"The fact that MS has all the numbers doesn't change what we do know to be fact, that the 800pt price point isn't a barrier for consumers."

How is this fact for Indie Games?

"Not many of the developers respect the highest selling products, mainly because they do not understand why they are selling. Developers consider it overpriced...despite the fact that it the highest grossing Indie game we know of. Obviously consumers think different."

I am a consumer as well as a developer. I just happen to have higher standards than most consumers. I understand why they're selling. It doesn't matter to me because I'm not a typical consumer and would never waste money like they obviously can and do.