‘XBLA isn’t a golden ticket to riches anymore’
Team Meat co-founder and Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes advises developers to make deals with Steam and avoid Microsoft, in a recent interview with ology.
“XBLA isn’t a golden ticket to riches anymore,” Refenes said. “Just ask any of the numerous games that came out on XBLA that haven’t broken 50k copies sold.”
After a troubled partnership with Microsoft in 2011, Refenes has been singing this anti-Microsoft tune for a while, but it’s refreshing to see him elaborate and offer an alternative to developers — Steam is an obvious choice, but it’s nice to hear it from an indie developer who found success through it.
“I do not recommend XBLA for developers. Stick to Steam,” Refenes said. “Steam gives you more sales and there are no hoops to jump through to sell your game on Steam. XBLA wants control, they want to tell you want to do and at the end of the day they have control over aspects of your game that they shouldn’t…like the price, release date, marketing support, etc,”
