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[Rlan]

My XBLA sales analysis is now available on Gamasutra! Under the title "Spelunky console debut doesn't hit indie expectations set by Fez, Braid". Hmm.

It's that time of year again -- the Summer of Arcade, an event held once a year to show off the best and brightest the Xbox Live Arcade can offer. This month we look at Tony Hawk HD and Wreckateer, as well as those titles that didn't make it into the promotion, like Spelunky and Quantum Conundrum.

We've pieced together Leaderboard statistics and Metacritic ratings from every title released in July, where available, which allows us to determine how new games have sold and how well they were reviewed. We also look at several older titles that continue to do well, as well as specific downloadable content for games that support it.

You expecting to run into much gunfire in these caves?

Despite Spelunky being a well-known indie darling, it hasn't seen the same popularity of games like Limbo, Braid and Fez. The game added only 17,818 players in the first week for 33,107 players for the month. It is the best-reviewed title, however.

Even taking the price difference between it ($15) and Fez ($10) into account, it hasn't seen much money. It's shame that we haven't seen another big indie seller, but the developers should be pretty happy with the great reviews.

Bellator: MMA Onslaught, developed by Kung Fu Factory and published by MTV's 345 Games, did not have any leaderboards that we could follow. It was also the worst reviewed title for the month.

Frogger: Hyper Arcade Edition appears to have sold quite poorly. If people wanted Frogger, they would have picked up one of the previous two releases. The Xbox Live Arcade version was almost purely to complete the rundown of releases, as it also released on WiiWare, PlayStation Network, and iPhone.

There is way more to this analysis too! Click here for the full thing!

 

[Haunted]

Spelunky is fantastic. Hopefully it'll pick up some more sales on the Steam release - it definitely deserves it.

 

[Nirolak]

Is this the worst performing Summer of Arcade ever?

 

[Santiako]

C'mon people, buy Spelunky!

 

[Zeouterlimits]

Is this the worst performing Summer of Arcade ever?

Critically certainly.
TH HD seems to have done well, but Wreckateer obviously hasn't.

 

[Saty]

Still think 124K for Fez is weak because it had raving reviews and was hyped for years. But at least it is keeping constant with selling 2K a week.

 

[Rlan]

Is this the worst performing Summer of Arcade ever?

By my count definitely. Wreckateer tanked, Deadlight did about 50K? in it's first week. Hybrid's very low as well. Doesn't help that Minecraft, Trials Evo and Walking Dead are beating the shit out of everyone at the moment.

 

[Card Boy]

Is this the worst performing Summer of Arcade ever?

Yes, Tony Hawk is actually doing very well though despite its lack of content. Hopefully Dust can save it (in terms of quality)

 

[bon]

Spelunky selling less than Fez is a crime.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I've bought the fewest games in this years summer of arcade, and there certainly doesn't feel like there's a classic XBLA standout here.

I didnt like spelunky after getting it impulsively due to the hype. Just not my type of game I guess.

Frogger is alright for what it is. Shouldn't be $10 though, the same game is .99 on iOS.

 

[DD-11]

I would have bought Spelunky, but not for 1200. If it drops to 800, I'll be there.

 

[Khezu]

Spelunky is the best game on the service, it deserves all the sales, all of them.

 

[Zia]

That's a really low number for Spelunky. Ugh. I feel like we're reaching saturation point.

 

[Noogy]

Spelunky is the best game on the service, it deserves all the sales, all of them.

Truth.

 

[kadotsu]

I wonder if end of gen fatigue is also hitting the DD services. The only titles that are doing well are either sequels (Trials) or games that have been in development for so long that they caught traction in the HD boom days (FEZ). I also find the lack of external promotion annoying. MS may be good (arguable) with promoting smaller titles on the dashboard but that doesn't help if you don't turn in your 360 daily. I've never seen a TV ad for XBLA/PSN.

I hope that some of these titles will continue to sell or get a second chance on other services. I still need to get Shuggy on Steam.

 

[DGRE]

Is this the worst performing Summer of Arcade ever?

I think it will be critically and commercially. Hybrid is really awesome but the matchmaking makes it borderline unplayable.

 

[metalslimer]

How did Sony's summer of arcade equivalent turn out? I remember reading they were investing in exclusive PSN content as well.

 

[toythatkills]

That's a really low number for Spelunky. Ugh. I feel like we're reaching saturation point.

It seems about right to me. It's an incredibly niche game, and no matter how awesome it is the difficulty is going to turn a LOT of people away.

If he wanted more sales he could have made it easier, but he made the game he wanted to make knowing that sales would likely suffer. It's admirable.

 

[Daigoro]

Spelunky is the best indie game on XBLA. it deserves sell what Braid and Fez have sold combined.

EDIT: add Limbo to the pile. Spelunky is better than all 3 combined.

It seems about right to me. It's an incredibly niche game, and no matter how awesome it is the difficulty is going to turn a LOT of people away.

If he wanted more sales he could have made it easier, but he made the game he wanted to make knowing that sales would likely suffer. It's admirable.

doesnt seem right to me. seems very wrong actually.

but yes, most game consumers are soft chumps these days. we can agree on that.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Summer of Arcade has been kind of sabotaged ever since MS started forcing Kinect-only games into it to push Kinect. That just removes an available summer slot from a game that could have enjoyed the bump a lot more.

 

[Shard]

Summer of Arcade has been kind of sabotaged ever since MS started forcing Kinect-only games into it to push Kinect. That just removes an available summer slot from a game that could have enjoyed the bump a lot more.

It has laso been sabotaged by Microsoft churning out one of thee blocks season after season, the Summer of Arcade used to feel special, it used to represent the best of the best of the XBLA, now it is just another promotion.

 

[yn-neko hates a cat]

It's strange to be a publisher in this day and age. You look at a game like Spelunky which has pretty good word of mouth and has been given a descent amount of push in media (realistic to the cost of producing the product of course) as well as having critical acclaim and it's clear that it's not the production and marketing that's lacking, its interest. Should the marketing end see this reception and say "well let’s put $2 million into advertising it; that should turn things around" and still be expected to keep their jobs? Bad things happen to good games and as sad as it is, as deserving as people feel the game may be, it ended as it was meant to be

Edit:
I'm not sure this is really Kinect's fault that other games on the service are suffering. A lot of things are competing for attention at the moment and it's not only on XBLA. It's not even a matter of direct product to product completion anymore. It's about name recognition. Wreckateer has a poor opening while Fruit Ninja is still killing it. Spelunky dies out of the gates while Trials started and continued strong. Minecraft was is a juggernaut on other platforms so what was the surprise here? It certainly predictable, given that the anomaly in sales of Minecraft clones on XBLIG, that people will gravitate towards popular archetypes. It's the same reason while the most successful artist all sounds similar; people like known quantities. It's not really a blame thing but if people want to point fingers, the fault lies with the consumer.

 

[outunderthestars]

I think the lack of sales could also be based on the games they offered. Outside of Tony Hawk, everything seemed a bit underwhelming.

 

[OnPoint]

Spelunky is the best indie game on XBLA. it deserves sell what Braid and Fez have sold combined.



doesnt seem right to me. seems very wrong actually.

but yes, most game consumers are soft chumps these days. we can agree on that.

Making the game he wanted to make without pandering to the masses seems wrong? I suppose it would depend on your vantage point and what set or priorities the developer was working with, but I feel like the game is absolutely 100% what he intended to create. And in an era where some developers say that polish is preferred over ingenuity -- right or wrong -- it's an admirable task to at least some of us.

 

[BigWeather]

Spelunky deserves better, but I agree the difficulty scared people away. Too bad, really, it is easily one of the best games on XBLA.

 

[Caspel]

I didn't know Frogger existed until I decided to go on a demo downloading spree and saw it in the recent demo list. It was quickly deleted in favor of buying Ticket to Ride instead.

 

[bigdaddygamebot]

It's more than just the quality of the games.

$15 kills the opportunity for impulse purchases.

 

[Rlan]

It's more than just the quality of the games.

$15 kills the opportunity for impulse purchases.

Not really accurate for other stuff though -- Limbo, Braid and all that have been $15. Heck, today Minecraft crossed 4 million players on the Leaderboards and that game's $20.

 

[Neverender]

I honestly didn't even realize summer of arcade was on this year. None of the games interest me anyway, unlike other years where I've picked up at least a couple.

 

[OnPoint]

Not really accurate for other stuff though -- Limbo, Braid and all that have been $15. Heck, today Minecraft crossed 4 million players on the Leaderboards and that game's $20.

I think the point stands regardless. Limbo had a striking visual style and groundswelled through word of mouth on the back of the unique success afforded by Braid and its unorthodox puzzles. I've heard it said that Braid is the first true XBLA hit... and I do remember there being quite a lot of backlash about its price point.

And Minecraft, well, it's a phenomenon onto itself. It would probably sell at five dollars more if they wanted it to. Its clones are the most successful games on the XBLIG channel... a channel people who own the clones tend to forget about.

None of the three titles you mentioned were going to need the impulse price point to become sleepers -- Braid aside, they were mostly destined for success. A game like Spelunkey might see more people take a cautious dive at 800 points than 1200.

 

[Daigoro]

Making the game he wanted to make without pandering to the masses seems wrong? I suppose it would depend on your vantage point and what set or priorities the developer was working with, but I feel like the game is absolutely 100% what he intended to create. And in an era where some developers say that polish is preferred over ingenuity -- right or wrong -- it's an admirable task to at least some of us.

you are completely misreading what i wrote in response to what i quoted.

 

[FroJay]

Downloaded a bunch of demos recently from the Arcade library and nothing stuck out to me. Spelunky didn't do it for us, and we love platformers/puzzle games. Deadlight was also pretty meh from what I had seen in playthroughs. Nothing grabbed our attention this Summer except Lego Batman/Lego Indiana Jones which I bought on the cheap through Amazon.

 

[The Crimson Kid]

The Summer of Arcade branding certainly means much less than it used to. MS certainly squandered that brand by making those types of promotions much more often (making all of the promotions mean less) and by the quality of releases not being up to the level they used to. For those first few SoA promos, I either bought all the games in them because they were all great or at least tried every trial due to the strength of the brand of SoA. Last year and this year especially the quality of releases included in SoA have dropped considerably, in addition to the prices being higher on average than in years past. The only solid performer this time around is Tony Hawk, which is heavily leaning on nostalgia. Deadlight sold alright too due to the strength of the free trial, but nowhere close to the numbers past SoA games were doing.

How did Sony's summer of arcade equivalent turn out? I remember reading they were investing in exclusive PSN content as well.

That promotion is only halfway done, but so far the results are mixed. Expendables 2 was the first game and it was flaming hot garbage and it probably didnt sell too well. Sound Shapes is great though, but I don't know how successful it has been. There's no easy way to scroll to the bottom of the leader boards or to see how many people have played it. It is pretty accessible and had a fair amount of hype behind it, so it should be doing well.

 

[ZoddGutts]

A bit offtopic what where the sales of Skullgirls? Did that do good on XBLA?

 

[Dr Zhivago]

How have XBLA sales been affected by the new dashboard? They seem less visible than before.

 

[Shinta]

Not to sound too biased, but PSN blew away Summer of Arcade this year.

Sound Shapes, Dyad, Malicious, Papa & Yo. Expendables 2 was indeed flaming hot garbage, but there's no denying which digital platform had the more interesting line up this year.

And Tony Hawk comes out on PSN on Aug. 28th. anyway. Then Unfinished Swan in Q4 2012, supposedly. Not bad, considering how great Summer of Arcade has been in the past.

 

[Daigoro]

Not to sound too biased, but PSN blew away Summer of Arcade this year.

Sound Shapes, Dyad, Malicious, Papa & Yo. Expendables 2 was indeed flaming hot garbage, but there's no denying which digital platform had the more interesting line up this year.

And Tony Hawk comes out on PSN on Aug. 28th. anyway. Then Unfinished Swan in Q4 2012, supposedly. Not bad, considering how great Summer of Arcade has been in the past.

thats ok because 2 of the best downloadable games in the history of mankind came out on XBLA this year and neither were a part of the SoA promotion either. Trials Evolution and Spelunky.

Pinball Arcade and VF5 FS came out on both platforms as well.

SoA was pretty shitty this year, but XBLA itself has been magnificent.

 

[Shinta]

2 of the best downloadable games in the history of mankind came out on XBLA this year

Which? The main one that caught my eye was Sine More, and that's coming on Vita sometime soon. Deadlight looks neat also.

[EDIT] Nevermind!

 

[AHA-Lambda]

It's ok Dust: An Elysian Tail will save this year's woeful Summer of Arcade. I hope.

Speaking personally, I was really interested in Spelunkky and enjoyed playing the trail but I just am not willing to pay 1200 points for a game I know I won't get very far into let alone finish. Plus, it's free to play in my browser now since the XBLA release too.

 

[Gowans]

Yeah I'm looking forward to Dust but MS have dropped the ball with Summer of Arcade and I don't think they'll get it back.

There have been some huge XBLA games pre SoA and they weren't needed to be in a promotion but the promotion is loosing it's value.

It would be great to see a SoA sales analysis and also now comparing it to the stuff on PSN.

The stuff Sony put out with Dyad, Sound Shapes & Papa Yo etc looks to be the stronger one by a distance this year.

 

[toythatkills]

doesnt seem right to me. seems very wrong actually.

but yes, most game consumers are soft chumps these days. we can agree on that.

It's not right in that it should obviously have sold a million copies, but if you'd ask me what I expected it to sell it'd probably have been around what it did. There's the difficulty, and then there's people who totally miss the point and moan about the price. "$15 for basically nothing?!" without realising that there's more gameplay in it than there might seem. I dread to think how many hours I've spent dying by now.

Spelunky doesn't give much away on the surface, so $15 sounds like a lot. It's only when you play it that you realise how it's totally worth that, but it's difficult to convince people.

Not to sound too biased, but PSN blew away Summer of Arcade this year.

Sound Shapes, Dyad, Malicious, Papa & Yo. Expendables 2 was indeed flaming hot garbage, but there's no denying which digital platform had the more interesting line up this year.

This summer, maybe, but I think XBLA has been a fair bit better than PSN over the whole year thus far and the upcoming games seem more exciting too. You're assuming Papo & Yo will be good there, too =P

 

[Margalis]

That's a really low number for Spelunky. Ugh. I feel like we're reaching saturation point.

Every single indie game that comes out is either praised or if people don't care for it is not mentioned. (The same is true of mobile games) This has lead to an environment where discerning good games from bad or getting excited about new releases is virtually impossible.

When every game is a darling no game is a darling.

Maybe that's unfair, but as I've said before, in the end praising every indie game just for being indie is counter-productive to the cause of advancing indie games. It's unfair to big studios but also unfair to indie devs. The indie game darling is just a genre now and the praise is just noise.

I mean, some guy is saying that Spelunky is a great game that deserves sales. Sure. But last week the guy was telling me that some Cannabalt clone on iPhone is a great game the deserves more sales, and before that that Fez was one of the greatest games in the history of civilization. I'm now immune to this sort of stuff and I'm sure I'm not alone.

 

[Daigoro]

It's not right in that it should obviously have sold a million copies, but if you'd ask me what I expected it to sell it'd probably have been around what it did. There's the difficulty, and then there's people who totally miss the point and moan about the price. "$15 for basically nothing?!" without realising that there's more gameplay in it than there might seem. I dread to think how many hours I've spent dying by now.

Spelunky doesn't give much away on the surface, so $15 sounds like a lot. It's only when you play it that you realise how it's totally worth that, but it's difficult to convince people.



This summer, maybe, but I think XBLA has been a fair bit better than PSN over the whole year thus far and the upcoming games seem more exciting too. You're assuming Papo & Yo will be good there, too =P

yeah i know we actually agree on Spelunky's true worth. just sayin.

 

[alexandros]

This year Summer of Arcade fell right into the middle of the Steam Summer Sale. People just didn't have any money left.

 

[edgardavids]

I would have bought Spelunky, but not for 1200. If it drops to 800, I'll be there.

Came here to say this. Its just not a 1200 point game sorry.

 

[Daigoro]

Came here to say this. Its just not a 1200 point game sorry.

you dont have to apologize for being wrong. it happens to the best of us.

 

[Diablohead]

Dungeon hunter or whatever was doomed once it changed from its freemium model, wreckattear looks like a basic ball launching game slapped together with kinect support.

I have ought no games this summer until dust is out on Wednesday.

 

[Haunted]

I wonder if end of gen fatigue is also hitting the DD services. The only titles that are doing well are either sequels (Trials) or games that have been in development for so long that they caught traction in the HD boom days (FEZ). I also find the lack of external promotion annoying. MS may be good (arguable) with promoting smaller titles on the dashboard but that doesn't help if you don't turn in your 360 daily. I've never seen a TV ad for XBLA/PSN.

I hope that some of these titles will continue to sell or get a second chance on other services. I still need to get Shuggy on Steam.

That's a pretty good point, I hadn't thought of that.

That said, I find the current dashboard really annoying to navigate, there's so many ads there, I can't tell the difference between an ad and a promotion and just gloss over everything that's not my library/the marketplace.

It seems about right to me. It's an incredibly niche game, and no matter how awesome it is the difficulty is going to turn a LOT of people away.

If he wanted more sales he could have made it easier, but he made the game he wanted to make knowing that sales would likely suffer. It's admirable.

This is still recoverable, though. It took the place of Binding of Isaac in my gaming regiment after I 100%'d that game, and feels very similar overall (no wonder since Isaac was in part modeled after the original Spelunky) - here's hoping it can find similar success with some new promotions and sales on Steam.

 

[Pranay]

MS needs to step up a bit. Steam with steam deals and PS+ offers much better service, cheap/free games and good discounts.

 

[Rlan]

So mich good stuff coming up too -- Jet Set Radio, Sonic Adventure 2, MVsC Origins, NiGHTS HD, Counter Strike, Hell Yeah, Skulls of the Shogun, Pid, Retro City Rampage, Joe Danger 2, and so many other games. How they didn't beat some of these games baffles me.