Super Meat Boy

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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Microsoft’s annual Countdown Sale kicks off today (FYI – it’s Modern Warfare 3 today) and in addition to the 24-hour daily deals on offer, a whole host of XBLA …
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• The Xbox Community Ambassadors program is expanding. Ambassadors are regular community members who provide community support in exchange for some cool gifts, the higher end of which includes XBLA games. Are you knowledgeable? Apply today.
• The Verge reports that the ESPN Xbox Live app will be getting SmartGlass support some time this month.
• PlayXBLA revealed one of the new gods in  Ascend: New Gods, the Titan. See a screenshot after the jump.
• SmartGlass is now available for your iPhone or iPad–that is if you’re trendy lucky enough to have one. Pick it up here.
• Xbox Live apps Rhapsody, Blip.TV, LOVEFiLM Deutschland, RTL XL, and TOU.TV recently launched in their respective regions, and the IGN app is now available in Canada. For full descriptions, hit the jump.
• The Blinding of Isaac is coming to consoles. Super Meat Boy‘s Edmund McMillen announced the information via his blog earlier this month. No word yet if that includes the Xbox 360 and XBLA.
• Happy Wars has been updated with additional weapons, including a mailbox and a winged staff. No word on whether these are free or microtransactional.

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Look after the pennies, and the pounds (or dollars, euros, pesos or whatever) will take care of themselves. Or at least, that’s what our parents used to tell us, right?

That may be sensible where traditional currency is concerned, but it’s not a strategy that converts well into MSP. Waiting for sales and bargains may be the cheapest way of buying XBLA games – but what if the game you want never goes on sale? What if everyone else has moved on and you lose out on the best bit of a fantastic co-op game like Lara Croft: GOL or a community-focused game like Section 8: Prejudice? What if you think you’re buying something you want, but actually you just bought it because it was cheap and you end up wasting MSP anyway?

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The Bakers Dozen Achievement is all about rescuing your favourite characters that have been hidden throughout the world of Dust: An Elysian Tail. Don’t forget that when you get to any one of the cages that these guys are imprisoned in, you will need four keys and some quick hands to beat the locks!

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The reveal of Minecraft‘s second skin pack means the return of revealing sets of skins five at a time. While 4J’s Minecraft skins have always been good, the skins revealed today may be the greatest, most XBLA-friendly ones yet. The newest skins are all characters from indie games: Skulls of the Shogun‘s General Akamoto, Super Meat Boy, Spelunky, Cobalt Agent from the Mojang-published PC game Cobalt, and The Player from Retro City Rampage. Skin Pack 2 will feature 45 skins and is expected to cost 160MSP, akin to Skin Pack 1. More skins will be announced in the coming weeks.

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With Summer of Arcade looming on the horizon, we dip back into some recent hits to tide us over.
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We’ve known there were going to be some special XBLA character cameos in the upcoming 8-bit 80’s homage Retro City Rampage, and we couldn’t wait to see our favorite characters in lower resolutions. One …
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Retro City Rampage looks to be fighting for the title of Most Pop Culture References in a Video Game. While we already knew about cameos like Mr. Destructoid and …
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From Mario to Sonic, one of the most prevalent genres in gaming has always been platforming. It hasn’t been as important as it used to be but games like Rayman Origins prove people still care about platforming. On the XBLA side, the platforming genre has seen many leaps forward with hard difficulty, precise platforming or a creepy atmosphere. We’re not even done with the genre either with upcoming games like Pid and Fez. Today we thought we’d take a look at five really great platformers and discuss why they’re so good on XBLA.

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