Apparently independent developers are finding far more financial success with their games on the PlayStation Network than they are with Xbox Live Arcade or Steam. One developer recently spoke up to let others know the success they’ve had with their latest release on the PlayStation Store.
Retro City Rampage developer Brian Provinciano tweeted that his game has “sold much more on PSN than XBLA and more on the PS Vita than even PS3.” Provinciano also says that Valve’s Steam platform is outperforming Xbox Live Arcade as well.
Retro City Rampage was part of the PlayStation Plus program in recent weeks, and that probably gave some boost for the developer. However, the new easier to navigate and discover PlayStation Storefront could be playing a big part in users discovering Provinciano’s game as well. The lagging Xbox sales could indicate bigger discovery problems for Microsoft with their Metro style dashboard.
The new dashboard funnels users to very specific content on the Xbox 360, and there’s deep searching required to find anything that doesn’t reside in one of the dashboard’s advertising windows. For developers that don’t have the advertising budget to get into one of those prime spaces, they’ll have to rely on user knowledge of the system to find new games.
