“Microsoft will let independent developers sell video games for the Xbox 360 console — and keep most of the profits — beginning this holiday season, the company said Tuesday,” Barbara Ortutay reports for The Associated Press.
“Microsoft said it will let game makers who are members of its $99-a-year XNA Creators Club submit their games for peer review. If they pass, the game creators can sell their work on the Xbox Live Marketplace, the console’s online store,” Ortutay reports. Microsoft will let “game makers pick a price tag between 200 and 800 ‘Microsoft Points’ for their titles. Eight hundred of these points are roughly worth $10.”
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft uses “points” instead of real money so that there are always “leftovers” which encourages pigeons to continue buying more points. More importantly, it’s also a very nice free upfront loan. You “buy” points from Microsoft – meaning you give Microsoft real money for nothing – and they invest it and generate interest for themselves until you eventually send/receive/setup/test/repack/return your six Red-Ring-of-Death’ed Xbox units, get one that seems to work, however temporary that may be, and eventually “spend” your points on “Drake of the 99 Dragons.” How nice of Xbox pigeons to loan their hard-earned dollars to Microsoft, a $236 billion company. To Recap: Microsoft’s “points” are designed to confuse consumers and generate interest income from “leftover” amounts. That’s exactly why “1 Microsoft Point” doesn’t equal “1 U.S. Cent.” The more suckers Microsoft can dupe into this Microsoft Points scheme, the more “leftovers” they get.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple uses real currency. No left overs. No “points” scheme. Just a single, simple, straight-up, honest transaction. Because they aren’t unethical greedy bastards.
Ortutay continues, “Developers will receive up to 70% of the total revenue their games generate. Microsoft will keep the rest, though its cut will be more than 30% if a game is prominently featured — which should mean it would sell better.”
Full article here.
Guy Dixon reports for vnunet.com, “‘Nobody has ever done this before,’ said Boyd Multerer, general manager of XNA, Microsoft’s game-development system. ‘We have high hopes that it will be a good business. We have no proof. This is what happens when you do something that’s never been seen before.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Sam Spade” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: “Nobody has ever done this before?” Sheesh. Shameless Derivativesoft even copied Apple’s App Store split percentages.
@living in a bubble,
when my refurbished 3400 board died in 2000 after over a year and a half of use, not only did apple give me a complete refund, but also allowed me to apply it towards a new pismo for only a few hundred dollars more. I was under apple care.
when I tried to update my windows computer to xp service pack 3 it nearly destroyed my whole system.
-1 microsoft
SK:
If you’re going to make allegations about the G4 iBook you should cite a reference.
Secondly, we don’t know how long Bubble Boy waited until he brought in his iBook. He only said “after 12 months”. Well, maybe he walked in 18 or 24 months later and tried to get it fixed. Is that an example of “poor customer service”. And why should Apple (or Dell or anyone) sell extended warranties if they are just going to fix everybody’s computers anyway. At what point is it fair to draw a line?
For the record, I have two machines with over 100 apps and utilities each on them that run Leopard without any problems (I’m a developer). If anyone would run into problems, it would be me. I even use my computer as a multimedia center with a DVR and TV tuner. It runs 24/7.
yet another article title pulled right out of MDN’s ars, but I guess that is the only way this inferior apple site can survive
XNA was announced in May ’04 is already on its 3rd edition and was always intended for independent developers to make 360 titles. It was always the expressed plan to setup a way for the games to be sent to the masses in the future.
I completely agree about the points, but like others have said, they’ve been talking about having XNA “home brew” games on the Xbox Marketplace for years now. If anything you should be bashing them on how long it took (a typical Microsoft problem). But as usual, MDN took it too far and made themselves look dumb.
As a side note, hasn’t Valve been doing this with Steam for years? If you want to equate the two, then I guess Apple copied the idea from Valve.
This is an Apple oriented website. It’s all about bashing MicroSoft, who are still, and forever will be, our mortal enemy.
Petty details cannot be allowed to impede our mission in life: To boldly abuse where no man has abused before.
This is kinda dumb. XNA has been around a lot longer than the App Store. The two really don’t have that much in common. XNA is all games. App Store is apps: games, productivity, social networking, business, etc. The only real point to bash MS on here is that it’s taking forever to get XNA up and running.
Weak story take, MDN.
To be fair, MS announced the XNA, do-it-yourself for money program, well before Apple announced the App store for the iPhone/iPodTouch. True it probably won’t be as good, but hey… everyone wants to make their own game.
Actually MS got a whiff of what Apple was planning to do. So MS does its typical thing, announce it, have some half ass demo and start working like mad to get it done. Meanwhile Apple has been working on it already and launched the service way ahead of MS.
Thats because Apple was really working on this, while MS waited to see what comes of it so that they can copy and tell people they thought of it first. LOL
This is standard for the video game market. Nintendo is also doing it with the Wii.
I was in a game design degree in the fall of 2006 and this XNA program was being talked about by the instructors then. I think that MDN’s take on this is a bit off.
You wonder who would be stupid enough to convert their hard-earned U.S. dollars to “Microsoft Points”, but then you remember the hordes of ignorant bigoted racist homophobic illiterate bloodthirsty 13-year-olds who populate XBox Live and you go, “oh yeah.”
Jooop,
You have kids, huh?
It doesn’t surprise me that Microsoft announced something in 2006 that won’t see the light of day until 2009. Microsoft loves to “announce” things years in advance that may or may not ever become real products. Remember when they “announced” the Surface right after Apple released the iPhone? You still can’t buy a Surface and the iPhone is already on 2.0. Remember when they “announced” Longhorn, and before that Cairo, and of course WinFS? Remember when they “announced” that Windows 95 wouldn’t run on DOS in order to kill the competing DOS makers? Remember when Microsoft “announced” that Longhorn wouldn’t have a Registry? Remember when they “announced” Palladium and Hailstorm? Remember when they “announced” those Mira wireless computer displays? Remember when they “announced” Windows 7, a product which anyone would be a fool to expect before 2012?
When will people learn???
THE.MAC.GOD,
“To be fair, MS announced …”
This is MicroSoft you are talking about.
‘Fair’ has nothing to do with it.
“Actually MS got a whiff of what Apple was planning to do. So MS does its typical thing, announce it, have some half ass demo and start working like mad to get it done. Meanwhile Apple has been working on it already and launched the service way ahead of MS.
Thats because Apple was really working on this, while MS waited to see what comes of it so that they can copy and tell people they thought of it first. LOL”
Yeah…….MS got a whiff of it 4 years ago, before the iPhone even existed. Right. Sure.
Looks guys, I love Apple as much as anyone else here, but you really need to clamp down on the rampant, overblown hubris. Can’t you just love Apple products without turning into total douchebags?
“They’re ripping off Nintendo’s Virtual Console AND Apple’s App Store.”
The idea of downloading applications from the Internet from some master catalog is NOT unique and revolutionary.
Microsoft’s stores have obviously been in development long before Apple launched the iPhone application store.
“Can’t you just love Apple products without turning into total douchebags?”
Apparently not.
I love apple but does anyone realize that the xna program was announced in march of 2004 at GDC… the app store was announced in march of 2008… microsoft had the concept first but props to apple for doing it better
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@SK
“Yeah, the G4 iBook’s motherboards were a real monument to quality control….”
I believe you are referring to the iBook G3. Apple implemented a repair extension for this similar to MS’s repair extension for the XBox. Both companies recognized a higher than average failure rate and did the right thing.
“…… and I put Tiger back on 3 of my Macs cause Leopard is Apple’s version of Vista (Slow, Sluggish, Crash Prone)…”
Leopard is faster on all the Macs I have installed it on (4) than Tiger was. Never had a crash on any of them as well.
AAPLguy,
I second that. I had Tiger on my 1.2 GHz iBook which ran great with 768 MB of RAM. I now am running Leopard which runs just as well if not better. I did max out the RAM at 1,280 MB which sped it up a bit.
Heck, I have Jaguar on a 266 MHz iMac with 160 MB of RAM and it runs quite nicely.
In most cases it really helps to install as much memory as possible, no matter what operating system.
>MDN wrote: Apple uses real currency….Because they aren’t unethical greedy bastards.
As opposed to being ethical greedy bastards?
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Your Windows TROLLS are all wrong. Steve thought about this 10 years ago when he came back. I’m sure of it.
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If Microsoft’s app store were really in development before Apple’s app store, why was Apple’s store completed and launched first?
Microsoft’s store is nothing but an announcement at this point. I can’t buy apps from an announcement.
I would say that Nintendo was doing it first.
Wiiware… uses also the points approach.
So I guess not a very good research from MS or MDN..