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Indie Royale dishes out 'The Really Big Bundle'
For its third offering, Indie Royale is bundling together five new games because ... hey, we're all buying stuff right now and everyone loves cheap bundles of good games. A bit of quantity and quality, you know? And the Indie Royale folks must know what they're doing -- Gamasutra reports the first two bundles have moved over 350,000 games across 70,000 total bundle sales. Within The Really Big Bundle, you'll be able to grab headliner Really Big Sky and a pair of Zeboyd games (from the guys bringing back Penny Arcade Adventures) namely Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII. Rounding out the final two columns in this pentagon of parsimony is Runespell: Overture and Eufloria.
Steam releases of Cthulhu Saves the World, Breath of Death VII outperform entire year on XBLIG
In a very brief announcement on its website, Zeboyd Games has revealed that Cthulhu Saves the World and Breath of Death VII have been performing very well on Steam. Just how well? "We are pleased to announce that Zeboyd Games has already made more revenue in less than a week on Steam than we have in over a year and a half on the Xbox Live Indie Games service." Another post on Zeboyd's site details the early success of its game on Steam. The developer stated it would have been happy to occupy a spot in the top twenty. On launch day, however, the studio shot into the top sellers and occupied the number one spot for most of the day. Earlier this year, Zeboyd took donations to help fund the PC port of Cthulhu Saves the World, which includes a copious amount of new content (which is now available on the Xbox version as well). So, in other words, the studio has gone from a lack of funds to besting more than a year's worth of sales in a single week. We'd say that's a pretty good turnaround.
XBLIG creators express disappointment with low sales
Xbox Live Indie Games might allow creative independence, but they aren't quite the path to financial independence just yet. As one piece of anecdata about the relative success of an XBLIG launch, Sequence creator (and ex-DS Fanboy writer!) Jason Wishnov described his experience to Ars Technica. Following a positive press reception, Sequence sold around 2,000 copies, a result Wishnov categorized as "a bit of a flop." He's looking at PC and mobile platforms for future projects; "It's not financially viable to do a larger-scale project and [not] expect with any certainty to make some money," he said. Zeboyd's Robert Boyd told Ars that his games, Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World, sold around 50,000 and 16,000 copies each respectively, making them relative hits for XBLIG. "I think our games could sell a lot better than they did with a better platform and more visibility," Boyd said. He's testing that theory with a Steam release of both on July 13. The bundle will cost $3.
