Dark Octave said:
I would love to see some sales data for these games vs. XBLA games. I guess I will have to wait for that. Hope they do just as well. The ones that deserve it at least.
Creators will have direct access to some sort of sales data for their own published games, but it's not up and running yet.
Dark Octave said:
How is a community game different from an XBLA game if they are both of equal quality and both the same price?
My personal opinion is that Snake360 matches other XBLA games pound-for-pound on features, and that it is completely worth the $5 asking price, despite it not being a graphical masterpiece. I have sampled some other Community Games that are very polished and professional--and worth their asking prices--and some that are not.
At the moment, I'd say the main difference between Community Games and XBLA, besides the lack of Achievements and in-game Leaderboards in the former, is the difference in quality control. It is certainly true that bad XBLA games are out there, but you at least know when you're buying one that it's been thoroughly tested by professionals. The Community Games you'll be buying, on the other hand, have gone through all different levels of polish.
Over the 11 months I developed Snake360 I was constantly demoing it at parties and other gatherings, calling upon friends to help test, showing it to a wide range of people, etc. For those of you who reach the credits, you will find a lot of names under "testing/input." I feel that the game is very polished and I'm confident that all of the major bugs and issues have been squashed. However, Snake360 remains untested by a team of professionals. Is there something I missed? I can't bet my life that there isn't.
I have seen games submitted to peer review that still have crash bugs. Most do not make it through review, but there is always a chance that we will miss things...after all, we're not professionals. Also, one reviewer submitting a crash bug does not guarantee that the game will fail the overall review. Yesterday, I was able to crash one of the games that is due to be released today! Granted, it was a fairly obscure bug that most players won't find, but it's there and it will be for sale.
Furthermore, XBLA games have standards. They must run in high-def, they must not crash, the menus must be set up a certain way, the fonts must be large enough to read on SDTVs, the developer must take care to make sure that nothing runs offscreen on an SDTV, the interface must be clear and easy to understand, and more. XBLA games MUST live up to these or they don't get released. With CG there are no standards. Games might have interfaces that you're not used to, or that don't make sense. Some features may not work as expected. Does the game pause automatically when the Guide is opened, for example? It's supposed to, but in CG that is not mandatory.
So that, IMHO, is the main difference. Community Games is an experiment and a lot of good things will come from it, and you will have a lot of fun. But please keep in mind that it is still a bit of an experiment at this time. If you buy something and you find a bug, or have an issue, please report it. You'll find that many of the games have their own homes on the Internet (like www.snake360.com!) and you can certainly voice your opinions there, but all of the games will automatically have a forum thread on xbox.com, and that's also a good place to post your findings.
By the way, to those folks asking about games that were online during the XNA beta: it is up to the individual devs to resubmit those games. All of the games were wiped off the service when the final version went live. I'm thinking that the reason is that XNA 3 is required for the final Community Games, and the old games were all made with XNA 2.
btw, rohlfinator, CG can have online multiplayer. It's limited to Xbox Live sessions, though. We can't program our games to communicate with any outside servers. That is the main limitation.
