XNA games don't make a profit, world goes "No shit"

A while ago, a service on Xbox Live Arcade was released called "XNA Game Creator's Service". Basically, it was a small devkit people could use to make little games and release them for paid download on Xbox's Live service. It was a way for any little schmuck with a dream and some programming talent to showcase their ideas to the world.

There was an article released today that showed that the service was a miserable failure as far as profit margins go. I mention this here because just a few days ago I was thinking "man, whatever happened to that XNA service. I wonder if it shaped up and if there are any gems on there", and then here comes this article, almost in unspoken telepathic response. At the end of the article, regardless of what source you grabbed it from, the poster was like "what do you think, community? Why don't people buy XNA games? Is it because MS didn't advertise the service or is there just too much stuff there? Is it pointless?"

I like how there's no third option: "I don't pay attention to the service or the games because literally every single one of them is absolute trash". Seriously, the other day I looked through the selection of games they had available, and the second one in the list was "Fart Explosion" or something. There's roughly four billion games on the service, and even if it was possible to rate or to categorize the sheer amount of them, it doesn't matter becuase i'm not paying MS Fun Money Points for something that's basically a poorly made cell phone game from four years ago.

This is the indie scene, you guys. You give people cheap devkits and a forum, and they'll pump out nothing but garbage and one or two gems, years apart. In my life i've only seen two games from indie developers that were either good, or not some elaborate twenty minute long joke.

Here's a funny contrast: During the same time period, there was an article talking about how much every developer is excited for making projects for the iPhone. It's the big thing they can't wait for. As an addition to that, there was *another* article talking about how two developers who had made it big on the iPhone basically said quality means nothing when making an iPhone title. There's no rhyme or reason to any given product's success. Which, if you're paying attention in the studio audience, is why every developer is so excited. They don't have to give a fucking damn about these products and they'll make so much money. Someone like Pandemic could code in a weekend a little flashy bloopy thing for the iPhone and it would probably make back half the earnings of one of their big boy titles.

So, we have the iPhone, a licence to print money. Then you have the XNA crowd, who are largely ignored. They're pretty much the same thing: Shit. So why is one successful and one not?

Quality, thankfully. When consumers are sitting on a machine that has the best the industry has to offer, both in retail and downloadable games, no one gives a shit about Fart Explosion 9000 from some idiot with twenty dollars and a C++ book. When you're on the iPhone, you're already a fucking moron that spent way too much money on an Apple product. Apple costumers are notorious for buying whatever Apple tells them to, because all of their products work together plus holy shit look how white and slick they are. You're not going to hop onto the Apple download store and all of a sudden be picky with what you put on your ExpensaPhone. If they had the ability to discern quality and pick out the best products, they wouldn't have an iPhone in the first place.

You know, at least MS tried. At least they gave you guys a forum to post your works. It's not their fault that all you were able to come up with was worthless idiocy.