There is a F.A.Q on the XNA creators club website. It should give you all the answers you need.

I also recently started looking into XNA. I downloaded a couple of the more popular titles and anything that looked 3d. Some of the "games" are just screen savers and I think three of them were meant to turn the controller into a vibrating massager. The most popular at the time, “Headshot”, could have be put together in a few hours.

Judging by the number of reviews the games had received and the value of MS points, I guessed that the more popular games pulled in about $3,000. But I’m not sure if you have to buy the games to review them.

Also, you may try joining a team that already has a subscription.

Good luck

If you are a student you may be able to get at trial membership which enables you to do everything (including running your game on the 360) except actually publishing your game. You still need a premium membership for that. So you can develop your game and when you're ready to publish, buy a short-term membership (40 usd iirc) and publish it.

I have a game published on Xbox Live Indie Games, NextWar: The Quest for Earth.

I can echo the general sentiment of "don't quit your day job". NextWar is one of the more successful XBLIG games, and it's currently hovering around #11 of the "Top Rated" list. Still, NextWar never made a significant amount of cash. Since release (according to the latest data I have), NextWar has made US$5206.68, selling 3433 copies and 16943 trial downloads.

For the majority of its life, it sold at the 200MSP price-point. Recently, I dropped the price down to 80MSP. If you want a slightly larger picture of what the typical XBLIG makes, see the "Share your sales numbers" thread in the XNA Creator's Club forum.

The short of it is: a large number of games don't even break US$1000. A few make several thousand, and NextWar is in that category. A very small minority make tens of thousands... and even the best cases aren't enough pay a single developer's annual salary, let alone a team.

Quote: Original post by GninjaGnome
I also recently started looking into XNA. I downloaded a couple of the more popular titles and anything that looked 3d. Some of the "games" are just screen savers and I think three of them were meant to turn the controller into a vibrating massager. The most popular at the time, “Headshot”, could have be put together in a few hours.

The current most popular games, including "Who Did I Date Last Night" and "Headshot" got there by a combination of luck and a bug in the system.

These two games were released close to the Xbox 360 dash update which added user ratings, and I believe XBLIG is seeing increased traffic due to this. The best-selling list appears to be broken; it hasn't changed at all since the dash update. Which means that the games that were at the top of the list during the dash update have stayed there permanently for the past week or so due to a bug. Since they're on top of the best-selling list, they get more exposure and more people try those games. So in effect it becomes self-perpetuating.

That's how games like "Who Did I Date Last Night" and "Headshot" have remained at the #1 and #2 best-selling positions, despite having relatively low user-ratings.

thanks guys for the advices.

GninjaGnome, the rating system can be rated by anyone, you don't need to buy it to rate.

lexs, I am not a student anymore. I think I will finish my game for Windows before subscript for the creator club to port it for xbox360. This will save me money.

Sc4Freak, the "Share your sales numbers" thread in xna creator club forum has some really good sales statistics shared by the indie developers. That's really good for me to research. I agreed that the top download list has flaw. I guess they are using the past week statistics for the list, since Headshot and the other games were released the past week, they get to be on the list because they had more traffics from the new arrival list.

Your game has pretty good rating with 4 stars. I will definitely try out your NextWar game tonight. Thanks a lot!

Quote: Original post by Sc4Freak

The current most popular games, including "Who Did I Date Last Night" and "Headshot" got there by a combination of luck and a bug in the system.

Thats good to know. I'll have to check out your game when I get home tonight.

Hi,

I think Microsoft published their numbers of games sold on XBLACG - Community games or Indies games and the numbers were quite disappointing.

You can check out the numbers of some of the games here in this
Gamasutra Article

We ourselves are making a 2D arcade adventure game The Adventures of Jai but this game is for PC.

Depending upon how it performs of PC, we might make a version for XBLACG as well.

Thanks,
Abhinav

Sales are going up for devs on XBLIG since the ratings though. See this post for some details: http://www.gamerbytes.com/2009/09/xbox_live_rating_system_helps.php

Estimates have the EZMuze guys making about a few thousand a week, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES has made about $8-$13K in a month, and others are seeing pretty decent returns. Not everyone is making that kind of money, but it's like that everywhere. The simple fact is that, even on AAA games, most games aren't profitable.

As for making back the $99, that's easy. Even my game which was buried during the launch of XBLCG back in November made about $600 between then and March. And now the sales are looking better, so I definitely think XBLIG is worth it for anyone who wants to make a console game but doesn't have an XBLA contract (and realistically, most people won't get XBLA contracts).