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Xbox has paid over $4 billion for 3,000 id@xbox games since over the last 10 years.

https://apptrigger.com/2023/03/22/xbox-idxbox-games/
Id@Xbox head Chris Charla has announced that Microsoft has paid out an enormous sum to developers over the last ten years. The reveal was made in an Xbox Wire post with Charla speaking about the tenth anniversary of the program.

Since the program’s inception, a total of over 4 billion dollars has been paid out to developers for more than 3,000 games. There are also another 3,000 more in development. Some other interesting statistics about the program are as follows:
  • The program has developers in over 100 countries
  • 200 developers initially, now over 5,000
  • 39% in the action adventure genre – the largest in the program
Charla mentioned that aspects of the program such as Game Preview and cross progression would not have been possible without the assistance from these developers in the program. In order to better aid the developers, they will now be able to publish physical copies of their games with only “minimum order quantity”. This hasn’t been fully rolled out yet, but more information on it would be coming soon.

Improvements to the Game Pass program were also announced. Now, the addition of a new template that all developers will have access to will make it easier to simply and easily submit their game for Game Pass consideration. There is no doubt to the success of the Game Pass and Id@Xbox program with countless titles and so many winning awards such as Cuphead, DeadCells, Inside etc.

With ten years in the books and many more to come for Xbox, it is exciting to see what may be coming down the road. Charla commented on that fact by saying:

“We’re also excited to meet with developers in person, keep listening and keep planning how we can improve our offerings for independent developers on Xbox, whether that’s through discovery improvements, promotional amplification, sharing more data to help developers maximize their success on our store, or ways we haven’t even considered yet.”

Since 2013 the ID@Xbox program was made to get indies to invest or come to the Xbox platform starting with early Xbox One, 10 years later Microsoft has paid out $4 billion dollars for 3000 indie games during this time.

These indies range from exclusives/timed exclusive games funded or aided by Xbox, to get studios to release on the platform that wouldn't have released otherwise, or indies to push Game Pass.

Xbox went from 200 indie developers at the start of the program, to now having over 5,000. This makes sense given that Microsoft for example, paid one developer $600,000 for their Cheese Cooking Simulator game to come to Xbox.

39% of indies are in the Action Adventure genre which is the plurality of the genres. 3,000 games now, with another 3,000 games in development which I assume is also part of that $4 billion figure paid for ahead of time.

Also soon the minimum order threshold will be reduced, making it easier for Indie games to run a certain amount of physical copies of their games.
 
Last edited:

NickFire

Member
They had the most powerful mid gen console last gen, and have the most powerful current gen console. Yet they spent 4 billion on indie games over 10 years, leaving years like 2022 by the wayside in terms of large scale first party games. Not trying to act indignant towards indie games, but considering the hardware they've been promoting this just makes no sense to me.
 

Midn1ght

Member
$600,000 for a Cheese Cooking Simulator?

spock GIF

HZyF3p.gif
 

PJX

Member
You can't be serious?

Sea of Thieves is one of the best games they ever made. Viva Pinata 1 and 2 were amazing. Grabbed by the Ghoulies was fun. Kameo Elements of Power was severely underrated.

Can't wait for Everwild. Rare being bought by MS was one of the best things to ever happen to them.
Best ignore them. They're just Nintendo fannies still butthurt over MS buying Rare.
 

MarkMe2525

Gold Member
I had to have played at least one of those games.
4 Billion with a B spent and I can't name a single one.
I believe what it is trying to say is those 3,000 have have made over 4 billion worth of royalties through the Xbox store. I don't believe it's stating MS paid 4 billion to secure the games in the platform. Basically, it's promoting to other devs that there is money to be made by having their game on the Xbox store.
 

bender

What time is it?
You can't be serious?

Sea of Thieves is one of the best games they ever made. Viva Pinata 1 and 2 were amazing. Grabbed by the Ghoulies was fun. Kameo Elements of Power was severely underrated.

Can't wait for Everwild. Rare being bought by MS was one of the best things to ever happen to them.

You had me until Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Kameo. And you omitted Nuts and Bolts.

GrouchyPoshCats-max-1mb.gif
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
You can't be serious?

Sea of Thieves is one of the best games they ever made. Viva Pinata 1 and 2 were amazing. Grabbed by the Ghoulies was fun. Kameo Elements of Power was severely underrated.

Can't wait for Everwild. Rare being bought by MS was one of the best things to ever happen to them.
Animated GIF
 
Wonderful program with insanely great results over a decade. Much love and respect to the devs and Xbox. I/kids have enjoyed the below from that program but if you haven't check out the full list here -
  • Cuphead
  • Inside
  • The Ascent
  • Tunic
  • Children of Morta
  • Ori
  • Hades
  • Superhot
  • Gang Beasts
  • Ultimate Chicken Horse
  • Slime Rancher
  • Among Us
  • Hyper Light Drifter
  • Overcooked 2
  • Stardew Valley
  • Vampire Survivors
  • Baldur's Gate enhanced editions
  • Hellblade
  • Shredders
  • Hello Neighbor
  • Maneater
  • My Friend Pedro
  • No Man's Sky
  • Poker Club
  • Jackbox party packs

Xbox_PR_ID@Xbox_10YearAnniversary-d7e5fc7e546b09e97ab7.jpg
 
Wonderful program with insanely great results over a decade. Much love and respect to the devs and Xbox. I/kids have enjoyed the below from that program but if you haven't check out the full list here -
  • Cuphead
  • Inside
  • The Ascent
  • Tunic
  • Children of Morta
  • Ori
  • Hades
  • Superhot
  • Gang Beasts
  • Ultimate Chicken Horse
  • Slime Rancher
  • Among Us
  • Hyper Light Drifter
  • Overcooked 2
  • Stardew Valley
  • Vampire Survivors
  • Baldur's Gate enhanced editions
  • Hellblade
  • Shredders
  • Hello Neighbor
  • Maneater
  • My Friend Pedro
  • No Man's Sky
  • Poker Club
  • Jackbox party packs

Xbox_PR_ID@Xbox_10YearAnniversary-d7e5fc7e546b09e97ab7.jpg
/thread
 

onQ123

Member
They had the most powerful mid gen console last gen, and have the most powerful current gen console. Yet they spent 4 billion on indie games over 10 years, leaving years like 2022 by the wayside in terms of large scale first party games. Not trying to act indignant towards indie games, but considering the hardware they've been promoting this just makes no sense to me.
You're missing the point that's $4 Billion going towards the little guys.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
They had the most powerful mid gen console last gen, and have the most powerful current gen console. Yet they spent 4 billion on indie games over 10 years, leaving years like 2022 by the wayside in terms of large scale first party games. Not trying to act indignant towards indie games, but considering the hardware they've been promoting this just makes no sense to me.
My thoughts precisely. You can get 40 $100 million AAA games for that much.
 

ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
Wonderful program with insanely great results over a decade. Much love and respect to the devs and Xbox. I/kids have enjoyed the below from that program but if you haven't check out the full list here -
  • Cuphead
  • Inside
  • The Ascent
  • Tunic
  • Children of Morta
  • Ori
  • Hades
  • Superhot
  • Gang Beasts
  • Ultimate Chicken Horse
  • Slime Rancher
  • Among Us
  • Hyper Light Drifter
  • Overcooked 2
  • Stardew Valley
  • Vampire Survivors
  • Baldur's Gate enhanced editions
  • Hellblade
  • Shredders
  • Hello Neighbor
  • Maneater
  • My Friend Pedro
  • No Man's Sky
  • Poker Club
  • Jackbox party pack
wait, wait, wait. i was going to comment something nice but....can you explain this?:
JTfX2uW.jpg
 
wait, wait, wait. i was going to comment something nice but....can you explain this?:

There are some really weird ones in there I didn't want to add to the list e.g. DayZ, MLB etc. I think those are just sort of an afterthought through ID@Xbox and really bottom of the barrel "only went through the publishing channel" instead of real investment or contracts with an Indie/studio during development. I think perhaps Gang Beasts is one I had slip through my personal list but 95% I vetted on my list. Do let me know if I'm wrong on a few. I agree it's pretty hard to determine on a few curly ones. We do know titles like Inside, Cuphead, Ori, Tunic, The Ascent etc all were really brought through ID@Xbox "properly".
 
Last edited:

Kilau

Gold Member
That 3,000 titles amount is dubious as hell if they are throwing The Show in there.

Maybe I’m confused about what id@xbox is all about. It seems like it’s portrayed as a way to help small devs get their games made but it looks like it’s mostly paying for games that already existed to come to Xbox.
 
That 3,000 titles amount is dubious as hell if they are throwing The Show in there.

Maybe I’m confused about what id@xbox is all about. It seems like it’s portrayed as a way to help small devs get their games made but it looks like it’s mostly paying for games that already existed to come to Xbox.

Have a look at the pages and pages of Indie titles in my link above, they far outnumber the PR hitlist of bigger titles coming across/delayed etc.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
They had the most powerful mid gen console last gen, and have the most powerful current gen console. Yet they spent 4 billion on indie games over 10 years, leaving years like 2022 by the wayside in terms of large scale first party games. Not trying to act indignant towards indie games, but considering the hardware they've been promoting this just makes no sense to me.
The market agrees.
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Wonderful program with insanely great results over a decade. Much love and respect to the devs and Xbox. I/kids have enjoyed the below from that program but if you haven't check out the full list here -
  • Cuphead
  • Inside
  • The Ascent
  • Tunic
  • Children of Morta
  • Ori
  • Hades
  • Superhot
  • Gang Beasts
  • Ultimate Chicken Horse
  • Slime Rancher
  • Among Us
  • Hyper Light Drifter
  • Overcooked 2
  • Stardew Valley
  • Vampire Survivors
  • Baldur's Gate enhanced editions
  • Hellblade
  • Shredders
  • Hello Neighbor
  • Maneater
  • My Friend Pedro
  • No Man's Sky
  • Poker Club
  • Jackbox party packs

Xbox_PR_ID@Xbox_10YearAnniversary-d7e5fc7e546b09e97ab7.jpg
Good post that highlights some of the great games. Can someone explain how this programme works though? Like Hades wasn’t funded by Xbox, the game would have existed anyway, so are Microsoft just making payments to assist with porting costs or something? I don’t really understand it.
 

reksveks

Member
Good post that highlights some of the great games. Can someone explain how this programme works though? Like Hades wasn’t funded by Xbox, the game would have existed anyway, so are Microsoft just making payments to assist with porting costs or something? I don’t really understand it.
It's very variable for an individual dev as far as I can tell but it is a program that gives 'indies' dev complete access to the documentation, two free dev kits (obviously xbox has the thing where you can turn a retail console into a dev console), development fund and then more technical support from Microsoft in terms of developing for xbox. There is also id@azure, which is a similar program but more focused on the game services within Azure.

I don't think it's particular unique/differentiated from the indie program that Sony runs. I also think that MS is probably 'abusing' the fact that the program is very easy to get into.

Would be interesting to see if they are using the same metric definitions as last year.

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2022/03/24/celebrating-nine-years-of-idxbox/

Since the program’s inception, independent developers have earned more than $2.5 billion in royalties and total revenue generated by ID@Xbox partners on Xbox almost doubled over the last three years.
The MLB Show may be doing some skewing.
 
Good post that highlights some of the great games. Can someone explain how this programme works though? Like Hades wasn’t funded by Xbox, the game would have existed anyway, so are Microsoft just making payments to assist with porting costs or something? I don’t really understand it.
Yes, publishing rather than direct development or ownership, which is likely restricted to Xbox or PC platform for such titles you mention. So yes you are correcr e.g. porting, marketing, consumer support etc. In turn publishers get a cut of sales or MTX for said platform(s) etc.
 

reksveks

Member
Banjo64 Banjo64 if you want a bit more insight, in the latest xcast episode from Kinda Funny, Charles Charla does explain a bit more about the help that they give, it does seem it's a bit more biz dev than I thought but some new-to-console devs will get a bit more technical support.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
What they aren't telling you is that I MA3D A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1 is responsible for $3.8 billion of that.


When microsoft stole Rare from Nintendo let’s ask how good that went?
they stole them by giving them Nintendo an agreed-upon price?
 
Last edited:

ungalo

Member
They should stop making 3 or 6 months exclusivity deal with indie devs, that's pretty pathetic to me. Just put it in Gamepass and that's it.

The fact that they went for their next gen launch with The Medium, Call of the Sea, Falconeer and Bright Memory without breaking a sweat was almost impressive in a way.
 
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