Xbox Gaming in South Africa

Want to know why Joe Danger is on PSN and not XBLA? Because developer Hello Games believes XBLA is too risky.

Speaking at a conference in Brighton yesterday, Hello Games' Sean Murray claimed that, while top ten titles on the platform sell well enough, almost half of the games released sell under 25,000 copies and vanish quickly off the scene entirely.

"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 25000 or less category."

He went on to speculate - unofficially, mind you - that around 23 percent of games released on XBLA sold 100,000 copies, 13 percent 200,000 copies and only 17 percent more than 200,000. Whether or not those 47 percent of games selling less than 25,000 copies were also the same 47 percent of games released on XBLA that are complete rubbish was apparently a subject beyond the scope of the discussion.

He also revealed that Joe Danger sold 50,000 copies in its first week of release, after breaking even on launch day.

[via GI.biz]