About Chris Leggett

Brian Provinciano, the developer of Retro City Rampage, made an interesting revelation on Twitter recently: the PlayStation Vita version of his game sold more copies than its XBLA and PSN counterparts.

Indies should definitely jump onto the PS Vita. RCR's sold much more on PSN than XBLA and more on PS Vita than even PS3.

— Brian Provinciano (@BriProv) February 26, 2013

In surprisingly singing the praises of the struggling handheld as a viable platform for indie developers, he also took the opportunity to fire a few passive-aggressive potshots at XBLA.

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In collaboration with Nickelodeon, Activision will bring Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows to XBLA this summer. Out of the Shadows, …
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Although details of next-gen hardware are expected in the near future, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 shows no signs of slowing down just yet. The company has announced that, according to …
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In a blog post, Undead Labs has detailed the way in which character and skill systems operate in its upcoming open-world survival horror title, State of Decay.

According to the studio, the characters that you encounter and choose to welcome into your group will affect the dynamic of your entire experience. Their differing skill sets and personalities will present unique challenges in the way they interact with each other.

“A good story isn’t about characters as unchanging archetypes,” begins the blog post. “It does explore innate potential and expectations, but it’s also about choices and change (or refusal to change). A good survival story in particular puts its characters to the test, but not just as individuals.”

In State of Decay, all survivors share the same basic skill sets – Cardio, Wits, Fighting and Shooting – but they are weighted differently depending on the character. Each survivor has a number of stars next to each category that represents their proficiency in that particular skill. Additional stars are earned by successfully making use of these skills in-game.

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In a video interview posted over at the Sega blog, lead designer of The Cave, J.P. LeBreton, explains that devising the game’s puzzles presented a unique kind of challenge.

Double Fine’s LeBreton, who also worked on BioShock, explained that the trick is to find the good kind of “being stuck.” Providing just the right amount of information is paramount when designing any game’s puzzles. But he learned that a straight-up adventure game like The Cave presents additional hurdles at the user-testing stage.

“You don’t have clear metrics like you do with a game that’s based around combat, where you can say, ‘OK, they died this many times and they took this much damage, and we’d rather it be this way, so let’s put more health packs or whatever in the level,” he begins.

“With [The Cave], it was more just like, ‘Well, they were stuck in this area for a long time. A, are we OK with that? And B, what do we want to do about it? Do we want to give them a hint in this direction? No, that’s too much of a gimme; let’s figure out something else. Or let’s just leave it, because it’s actually good because it’s late in the game, or it’s the right kind of difficult puzzle for this kind of situation.'”

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Speaking to Polygon, Telltale CEO Dan Connor revealed that “anything is possible” for the second season of the studio’s hit episodic adventure game, The Walking Dead. Of particular note, …
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Konami has announced that a revised version of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels will release on XBLA.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Decade Duels Plus is an updated release of a game that …
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While physical retail software sales appear to have trailed off at this stage in the  Xbox 360’s life cycle, XBLA has reportedly experienced its strongest year yet in 2012. …
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Speaking to VentureBeat, SpikySnail Games Studio founder, Niv Fisher, has commented about the struggles that indie developers encounter when marketing their games on XBLA.

In particular, the developer of XBLA game The Splatters claims that the marketplace has gotten “tougher in the last couple of years, with a few titles getting lots of promotion, exposure and sales, and the rest are getting hit pretty hard.”

Fisher argues that Microsoft can do much to address the issue, particularly with regard to the current dashboard. “I feel the current dashboard just doesn’t work well as a storefront, especially if you want to encourage discovery or diversity,” explains Fisher.

“Games are hard to find, there’s no friend-recommendation system, and lots of the store promotional space goes toward non-game applications – and now, also downloadable retail games. Sales are usually poorly promoted, and dashboard placement is sold and bartered with. Small developers like us have very little to offer here and are often left on their own.”

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Online retailer Amazon has listed a [easyazon-link asin=”B00B1ULJI0″ locale=”us”]Microsoft 5-Game Arcade/Indie Pack [Download][/easyazon-link] for only $10. While all are XBLA titles, the codes are only redeemable on PC and Steam, as opposed …
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