GameFest: TMNT, Street Fighter II Top XBLA Charts

At his GameFest lecture on Xbox Live Arcade development, platform manager Mark Coates revealed fascinating stats on the growth of XBLA games, including chart-toppers Street Fighter II and TMNT. Coates offered stats on the Xbox Live Arcade service in addition to those given out yesterday by Microsoft casual division manager Marc Whitten, which showed Microsoft predictions of 45 million downloads and more than 100 games on Xbox Live Arcade by the end of 2007, as well as a 156% average financial return over 12 months for Xbox Live Arcade titles published so far. Coates revealed an average friend list number of 23 users, and statistics on both the top selling and most-played games currently on the service.

Looking specifically at usage in 2007, Xbox Live Arcade has seen the most players on Konami's arcade port TMNT 1989, followed by Worms and UNO. Looking at length of session, casual games rule, with Jewel Quest, Hardwood Spades and Catan ruling the category. Finally, by minutes, card games again took top honors with UNO and Texas Hold'em, followed by Worms.

Turning to sales statistics across fiscal 2007, Street Fighter II HF has taken the top slot in sales volume, besting former champ UNO, which came in second above TMNT 1989. The same went for revenue, with Street Fighter ranking first, followed by Worms and PC port DOOM. By conversion rate, card games UNO and Texas Hold'em were outpaced by TMNT 1989. Coates also revealed that the average conversion rate was 18 percent across all titles, before showing sales volume over time.

Showing a classic long-tail trend, Coates noted that the first two months of Xbox Live Arcade titles only account for around a third of its sales, with revenues continuing to come in at a steady pace over the following year.

Finally, looking at Xbox Live Arcade as a whole, the service has seen steady growth in both number of purchasers and purchases themselves, showing marked spikes at the introduction of regular Xbox Live Arcade Wednesday updates, and during Konami's double-header weekend as it put both Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and TMNT 1989 on the market. Coates' comments came as part of a broader session on developing games for the Xbox Live Arcade service, which Gamasutra will later report in greater depth.