RadianGames Creator Shares Six Months Of Xbox Live Indie Statistics

Xbox Live Indie Games developer Luke Schneider has shared detailed statistics of six months worth of sales for titles under his one-man RadianGames label, showing 20,000 sales bringing in a little over $15,000 for the period. RadianGames titles are consistently shown as some of the best-selling on Microsoft's Xbox Live Indie Games service, which allows independent XNA developers to offer downloadable Xbox 360 titles with minimal review from Microsoft. But that relative sales success on the service translates to overall sales averaging on the order of only 50 per day over the life of each of Schneider's four released titles, which sell for only a dollar each. Microsoft takes roughly a third of the revenue derived from each sale. Schneider's data shows daily sales rates for his titles dropping significantly in November, after Microsoft changed the Xbox 360 dashboard to display Indie Games separately from other downloadable titles. Microsoft has since re-established the Indie Games original location on the dashboard, a decision not reflected in Schneider's data, which runs through November 8. The data also shows the role pricing can play in sales rates for Xbox Live Indie Games. Schneider's Crossfire, which launched at a price of $3 in July, saw daily sales well below those for games he launched at $1, including Inferno and Fluid. "I sometimes wonder about whether things would be significantly different if I had launched JoyJoy at $3 and stuck with that price for all my games," Schneider writes. "I’m sure the revenue per download would be higher, but I have no idea how much the downloads would have suffered because of it. In any case it’s too late to find out since the expectation is now set." Schneider goes on to say he's not sure the current level of sales and revenue from Xbox Live Indie Games will be enough to cover expenses for him and his family. Despite this, he says he still enjoys making games for the service. "Making Xbox Live Indie Games makes me happy because there’s no other way to make so many cool games for a console," he writes. "There are *many* better ways to make money for an independent developer, and lots of people try to tell me this, but there are *zero* other ways to do exactly what I want to do."