This reminds me of an analysis 2D Boy (World of Goo) have done last year about XBLA being past its prime. Ron Carmel conducted a survey among about 200 different indie developers and this is one the results:
http://2dboy.com/2011/10/03/xbla/
2dboy.com said:I asked these developers to rate the importance of certain factors in choosing which platforms they will develop games for. The most influential factor was ease of working with the platform owner, with 69% of developers rating it Very Important. In 2nd and 3rd place were the platform’s install base (63%) and how well the platform’s controls match the game (58%).
Since ease of working with the platform owner was voted the most important factor in choosing a platform, I sent out a followup survey to ask how easy each platform owner has been to work with. Here are the results:
Almost half of those who worked with Microsoft described the experience as “excruciating”.
Given that ease of working with the platform owner was voted the most important factor in choice of platforms, it becomes perfectly clear why XBLA, despite being a very strong channel with a large audience and huge earning potential, is dropping in popularity among these developers.
http://2dboy.com/2011/10/03/xbla/