Developer Calls Xbox Live Arcade a “Slaughterhouse”

Pictured: Xbox Live Arcade
While it is a universal truism that it’s hard out there for a pimp it may be equally true that Xbox Live Arcade is where small developers go to die. At least that’s the opinion of Hello Games’ Sean Murray, whose company chose to release their new game Joe Danger as a PSN exclusive since they considered Xbox Live Arcade to be a “slaughterhouse.”

“Why choose PSN? It was the only way we could self-publish,” said Murray. ” XBLA is kind of a slaughterhouse for smaller developers. There are games that do amazingly well. But there’s two titles released every week and a lot of those are falling in that 25,000 or less category.”

Murray backed up his statements with self-collected figures, which he admits are totally unofficial but he believes are accurate nonetheless. He claimed 47 percent of Xbox Live Arcade titles sold less than 25,000 copies, 23 percent sold around 100,000 copies, 13 percent 200,000 copies and 17 percent more than 200,000.

Slaughterhouse pic burned into your brain? Here’s an adorable baby giraffe to make you feel better
The conclusions Murray drew is that based on those numbers its very hard to get publishers to agree to put out Xbox Live Arcade games unless the titles are coming from well-known studios with a lot of clout. Since no major publishers were interested in Joe Danger, the Hello Games team was compelled to make the game a PSN exclusive, wracking up 50,000 units sold in the first week alone.

While there are quite a number of games popping up on Xbox Live Arcade very few of them come from small-time developers making it big. Chair had a big hit with Shadow Complex, but they’re a subsidiary of Epic and thus had a foot in the door already. Jonathan Blow’s time-twisting puzzler Braid was a true indie that made good, but part of the reason we’re still talking about it is the fact that no other game has really come along to pick up the “indie game on Xbox Live” torch.

There’s nothing cuter than a kitten high-five. You forget about that scary picture now?
Some folks might try to point to the Indie Games section of Xbox Live as proof the company does want these smaller titles to succeed, but remember that there are roughly 1,000 games available for the service and most are terrible. It’s very hard for the wheat to separate itself from the chaff there.

In spite of all this there is hope for the future. PlayDead Games’ Limbo is scheduled for release soon and it’s already generating a lot of the same buzz Braid did when it was released. So if Limbo succeeds does it prove Murray wrong, or is it merely the exception which proves the rule? Do you think independent games get a fair shake on XBLA?