Speaking at this year’s Develop conference (as reported at Develop Online), Sean Murray of four – man team Hello Games has revealed that over 30% of XBLA titles are so called ‘casual’ games; but that such titles make up less than 5% of the digital market.
He lays the blame for this at the door of Uno, claiming that publishers failed to understand the game’s popularity was mainly due to the fact it was given away free with the Xbox 360 Arcade. A very good point – but something’s missing in this discussion of digital stores.
Why single out XBLA? In the article at least, no reference was made to Steam, PSN or WiiWare (not even to compare them favourably to XBLA) nor even DsiWare – and the Dsi store must have a similar proportion of casual titles, if not even higher. Perhaps Murray has an axe to grind?
Nobody outside of Hello Games or Microsoft knows exactly why Joe Danger didn’t end up on XBLA. Perhaps Microsoft flat out refused to publish it? Murray also gave the audience a list of bizarre reasons that several (unnamed) publishers gave him for their lack of interest in Joe Danger. One was even “We want games that are less about fun right now”. Remember: when a dud game hits the shelves – or indeed, your digital store of choice – the publisher is most likely more responsible than the developer…
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