Zeboyd Games has recently announced that they have made more revenue in less than a week on Steam than they have in over a year and a half on Xbox Live Indie Games.
Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World were released on XBLIG on April 22nd and December 30th (respectively) last year. On July 13th of this year, Zeboyd Games released both titles on Steam, with 10% discounts. As of July 6th , they had generated roughly $100,000 total revenue over the course of the lives of their games at XBLIG. It was stated on their website that they couldn’t share specific sale info, but that their Steam sales exceeded their total XBLIG revenue.
Analysis: This is no surprise, to be perfectly honest. It’s easy to publish games to XBLIG, but you receive absolutely no promotion for your games and most people don’t even know there’s an Indie section on Xbox Live due to how hidden it is. Compound this with how abusable the voting system is, and your game ends up practically invisible.
Steam on the other hand, knows what they are doing. They are known for their fantastic sales, and the incredible amounts of revenue they generate. This even applies to Indie titles, which receive at least some promotion and much higher visibility in comparison to XBLIG.
