Hi, I was wondering if anybody here ever published a game with Xtreme Games LLC? Can you expect about the same royalties as Dexterity Software offers ($1000-$10000/month)? Thanks!

I''m kind of wondering something like this as well as the group I''m in has just finished our first game, and XTreme said they would pubish it. I''m wondering if going the shareware route would be a wiser decision for a small time game tho? Will XTreme do enough work to make the 50% cut worthwhile in you folks opinion I guess is what i''m saying.

- Dustin Hubbard

Xtreme are not a publisher. They are an agent. They do not directly produce any product or supply product directly to any retail outlets.

They take 50% for sublicensing your game to publishers who then produce product and send it to distributors or stores.

Hi,

I''ve pretty much been through them all over the last 3-4 years regards publishing and I never recieved a penny from sub-licence deals via them at least.

The only actual ''Budget Publisher'' I trust these days is eGames USA as the rest are really not worth the time and effort for what they ''eventually'' pay you.

I''ve seen it all trust me, and it''s not nice ! (


Adrian Cummings (Proprietor)
Mutation Software
EMail: arc@mutationsoftware.com
URL: www.mutationsoftware.com
URL: www.dweebs.info

I''d like to believe everything publishers say about payment, but unfortunately with all these NDA''s you never hear any good news.

Dexterity sounds like a good deal from all the spin published on their site and even here at gamedev. But I haven''t heard anything good or bad about them.

A few months ago they had this whole site buzzing with grand publishing opportunities and mention of a number of great titles being submitted. I''ve been routinely going to their site just to see any mention of these games. So far nothing, but it could be just too early in the process to mention a game.

I would hope that sometime in the future a publisher of budget titles will step up and openly make information available to the community of developers. Some of the information that would put me at ease would be:

1. For each game on a site, show the number of downloads vs. the number of sales (and in Dexterity''s case, the number of returns).

2. Either give contact information of previous developers or allow previous published developers the ability to post comments on the publisher''s site documenting how well or poor their game is doing.

I''m sure most if not all publishers would laugh at this and totally ignore the message. For the few that take it to heart, I think you could really help establish good publisher-developer relations which would greatly improve the submissions you recieve. I myself would gladly turn over my games (when they are complete) to a publisher I trust rather than spending time and money on self publishing through shareware.

borngamer

Just for the record I have nothing against Dexterity and wish them well... my comments were more aimed at Xtreme and as I am currently involved in finaly sorting out a contractual battle with several budget publishers and outlets (which I am winning nicely btw !) I am not at liberty to say any more.

Adrian Cummings (Proprietor)
Mutation Software
EMail: arc@mutationsoftware.com
URL: www.mutationsoftware.com
URL: www.dweebs.info

Everything I heard about Dexterity was good news until now. And the main guy there, Mr. Pavlina, seems to be a very trustable person (he''s been the president of the famous ASP).

And Dexterity has published at least a third party game, Fitznik, though it''s been a long way ago. I''ve heard him saying in these forums that he''s going to release the next third party games one by one, so I suppose it could take some time for him to publish them all.

Best regards,


--DK
--H. Hernán Moraldo
http://www.hhm.com.ar/
Sign up to the HHM''s developers'' newsletter.

Publish your game as shareware for a few months, then consider the budget route once you have all the user feedback (and thus their bug reports )
Publishers generally dont mind if a title is already on sale as sharewrae, in fact it proves the title is of saleable quality, and then you can compare your shareware eranings to the publisher cut and see if its your games fault (for being no good) or the publishers fault, if you dont earn enough cash.

http://www.positech.co.uk

I agree... best to publish as shareware first to get feedback and iron out any potential major bugs. You can always send it off for evaluation to a decent budget publisher when you tested the water a bit.

Adrian Cummings (Proprietor)
Mutation Software
http://www.mutationsoftware.com
http://www.dweebs.info

Hi,

You have to understand that only very select games make thousands or $10000 USD per month. You will never get this kind of money through XTreme games, ever. Looking at the royalty rates XTreme pays, I expect you to get less than 5% of the money you are mentioning.

I think Xtreme uses a confusing publishing scheme. What happens is this: you license your game to Xtreme, Xtreme pays you 50% of what THEY get from a publisher. Since they sell collections of games, you get a very small royalty percentage, several cents per copy sold if that.

This is because if they knock 10 or 20+ titles on a CD, and the publisher sells that CD for 9.99 or even 19.99, you get the following:

Publisher pays XTreme, say 10% royalties. Xtreme divides this by the number of games they licensed, say 20. This means 0.5%. THEN they pay you half (50%) of that since they obviously keep the other half as profit. Result: 0.25% royalty. I know this sounds unbelievable but this is what you get in the end. For a full price game, developer royalties usually run between 15-40%, depending if you self financed, finished the game or not, etc.

You may get a bit more if there are fewer games bundled, or you may get even less if there are more.

Yes, some budget collections sell a lot of copies, but that's over several years. You're fooling yourself if you think you'll get even a few hundred USD per month for years because you will not. Guaranteed.

Now, dexterity pays you more since they do not go through a publisher, plus they don't need to pay stores, distributors, etc. On the other hand, I know Dexterity does not accept most games because they would swamp themselves with a load a mediocre titles, which is not good.

If this is your first title, go shareware. If it does well, some budget publisher will approach you.

HTH

Mark






[edited by - Mark Tanner on May 7, 2002 3:48:30 PM]