Xbox Live Indie Games get reduced minimum pricing, increase in file size

Xbox Live Indie Games developers have something to cheer about as Microsoft has addressed a handful of concerns the community has been facing.

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Xbox Live Indie Games developers have something to cheer about as Microsoft has addressed a handful of concerns the community has been facing.

Projects may now be sized at a maximum of 500 megabytes, up from the 150 megabyte limit previously placed on games developed on the XNA-fueled platform. Developers have also been given the greenlight to host more projects than ever before, seeing the limit increase from 10 titles to 20.

Microsoft's biggest position shift is in price, the company revealed in a blog post earlier today. Whereas games has previously been priced according to their actual file size, which anything exceeding 50MB forced to be priced between the $3 and $5 range, Microsoft has now lowered the minimums to $1 for any game under 150MB. This change will hopefully create a bigger market of titles across the Xbox Live Marketplace and on the Windows Phone 7 platform.

Of course, this all hinges on the ability to actually find the Indie Games section of the Marketplace, which Microsoft has done a good job of hiding.

[Image from the indie Xbox dashboard spoof game 'Game Type']

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 4, 2012 8:00 PM

    Xav de Matos posted a new article, Xbox Live Indie Games get reduced minimum pricing, increase in file size.

    Xbox Live Indie Games developers have something to cheer about as Microsoft has addressed a handful of concerns the community has been facing.

    • reply
      January 4, 2012 8:00 PM

      This would have been great 2 years ago

    • reply
      January 4, 2012 8:12 PM

      how about they fucking push the service so people know it exists? The games could be free and it wouldn't mean shit since nobody knows about them :(

      • reply
        January 4, 2012 8:38 PM

        My game actually saw triple the sales in December that it got in October (450 vs 150), which is not bad considering it's dropped off the major lists (new releases, top rated, top downloaded). Not sure if that's just a bunch of new people perusing the marketplace or the new dash making indie games more prominent.

        • reply
          January 5, 2012 8:44 AM

          What is your game called?

          • reply
            January 5, 2012 11:37 AM

            Marksman: Long Range

            If you try it, let me know if you think it would be worthwhile porting to WP7...

    • reply
      January 4, 2012 10:21 PM

      Now if only they'd increase the cap on the Arcade so we can get the HD version of Stranger's Wrath.

      GRR.

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