Clover: another XBL Community Game suffers poor sales

By
Matt Ingrey
– June 24, 2009Posted in: News, Xbox Community Games, Xbox Live Indie Games
Adding fuel to an already fairly substantial fire, Clover’s developer has stated that Xbox Live Community games simply don’t offer a means to make a profit.
Clover is one of few Xbox Live Community Games to have gained attention from the press, and despite a positive response from critics and gamers alike, this attention hasn’t translated into sales.
Speaking to Digital Spy, Daniel Jones of Binary Tweed was adamant that the game wouldn’t turn a profit. “It’s a shame to say that Clover has not sold as many copies as we’d hoped for. As it stands, through Community Games alone, we definitely won’t recoup costs.”
Jones’ explanation for this is certainly food for thought, suggesting that the people that are buying games from the service aren’t interested in games. “”In the first week of Clover’s release, the top ten CG titles was made of eight applications, RC-Airsim and one edutainment game.”
The continuing success of Rumble Massage (a ‘game’ that makes your controller rumble a bit) at the expense of games such as Clover shows no sign of changing while there are no quality control measures put in place to stop such releases. Despite a comprehensive peer-review system being in place, games can only be rejected for major bugs or copyright infringement, for example, but not for being a poor product.
Jones’ experience with Xbox Live Community Games hasn’t been entirely without merit, despite poor sales. “Frustratingly enough, the critical reception to the game has been good… The size of the XBLCG market is prohibitively small to be financially viable, so I can only see it being of use to Binary Tweed as an arena for proving concepts.
“Although I can’t talk about specifics at the moment, Clover’s critical acclaim has opened doors to Binary Tweed. If you liked Clover, then it’ll be worth checking binarytweed.com regularly over the next few weeks.”

Clover - XBLCG

Adding fuel to an already fairly substantial fire, Clover’s developer has stated that Xbox Live Community Games simply don’t offer a means to make a profit.

Clover is one of few Xbox Live Community Games to have gained attention from the press, and despite a positive response from critics and gamers alike, this attention hasn’t translated into sales.

Speaking to Digital Spy, Daniel Jones of Binary Tweed was adamant that his game wouldn’t be able to turn a profit. “It’s a shame to say that Clover has not sold as many copies as we’d hoped for. As it stands, through Community Games alone, we definitely won’t recoup costs.”

Jones’ explanation for this is certainly food for thought, suggesting that the people that are buying games from the service aren’t interested in games. “In the first week of Clover’s release, the top ten Community Game titles was made [up] of eight applications, RC-Airsim and one edutainment game.”

The continuing success of Rumble Massage (an application that makes your controller rumble a bit) at the expense of games such as Clover shows no sign of changing, and the service will continue to be flooded with this kind of application while there are no quality control measures put in place to stop such releases. Despite a comprehensive peer-review system being in place, games can only be rejected for major bugs or copyright infringement, for example, but not for being a poor product. With it becoming harder and harder to find games on the service, sales are bound to suffer.

Jones’ experience with Xbox Live Community Games hasn’t been entirely without merit, despite his game’s poor sales. “Frustratingly enough, the critical reception to the game has been good. The size of the Xbox Live Community Games market is prohibitively small to be financially viable, so I can only see it being of use to Binary Tweed as an arena for proving concepts.

“Although I can’t talk about specifics at the moment, Clover’s critical acclaim has opened doors to Binary Tweed. If you liked Clover, then it’ll be worth checking binarytweed.com regularly over the next few weeks.”

Clover is available as an Xbox Live Community Game, for 400.