Xbox Live Arcade Sales Chart - Numbers and Statistics - News

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 08 November 2007 / 7,109 Views

A few notes:

As posted on the Microsoft Xbox forums here, I did a little bit of work hand-gathering numbers. As some people know, there are some major, comprehensive tracking services available to publically view Xbox 360 gamercards, as well as the fact these websites offer comprehensive totals for various games.

So with a bit of work, I sorted through these lists to gather a large database of various games, and the total number of users that have both played the game, as well as purchased the games.

So here it is, approximately 96 games tracked:

Est. Revenue	Est. Units Sold	Name	Released on:
$8,220,190	822,019	Texas Hold'em	08/23/06
$5,098,167	1,019,633	Uno	05/09/06
$4,010,749	267,383	Bankshot Billiards 2	11/22/05
$3,872,770	387,277	Worms HD	03/07/07
$3,279,057	327,906	Marble Blast Ultra	01/25/06
$2,932,683	293,268	Doom	09/27/06
$2,827,358	282,736	Castlevainia: SOTN	03/21/07
$2,811,198	562,240	Geometry Wars Evolved	11/22/05
$2,806,083	280,608	Street Fighter 2 HF	08/02/06
$2,708,118	270,812	Ultimate MK3	10/21/06
$2,204,180	220,418	PinballFX	04/25/07
$2,162,188	216,219	Zuma	11/22/05
$2,154,350	215,435	Small Arms	11/22/06
$2,141,288	214,129	Bomberman Live	07/18/07
$1,913,882	382,776	TMNT	03/14/07
$1,855,356	148,429	Lumines! Live	10/18/06
$1,783,403	178,340	Assault Heroes	12/13/06
$1,694,028	169,403	Heavy Weapon	01/17/07
$1,677,940	167,794	Feeding Frenzy	03/15/06
$1,674,613	167,461	3d Ultra Minigolf	04/18/07
$1,491,820	149,182	Cloning Clyde	07/19/06
$1,470,838	147,084	Alien Homnid HD	02/28/07
$1,405,168	140,517	Boom Boom Rocket	04/11/07
$1,337,518	133,752	Prince of Persia	06/13/07
$1,323,660	132,366	Wik: Fable of Souls	12/15/05
$1,309,908	130,991	Catan	05/02/07
$1,293,105	129,311	Bejewled 2	11/22/05
$1,276,000	255,200	Contra	11/08/06
$1,251,621	250,324	PacMan	08/09/06
$1,233,787	123,379	Outpost Kaloki X	11/22/05
$1,182,968	118,297	PacMan CE	06/06/07
$1,122,399	224,480	Galaga	07/26/06
$1,114,830	74,322	Puzzle Quest: CotW	10/10/07
$987,324	197,465	Smash TV	11/22/05
$960,878	192,176	Gauntlet	11/22/05
$957,261	191,452	Frogger	07/12/06
$900,073	90,007	Mutant Storm Reloaded	11/22/07
$893,654	178,731	Sonic the Hedgehog	07/11/07
$862,070	86,207	Jewel Quest	03/08/06
$801,213	80,121	Carassanone	06/27/07
$799,975	79,998	Mad Tracks	05/30/07
$780,395	78,040	Astropop	03/22/06
$764,858	76,486	Luxor 2	04/04/07
$758,788	151,758	Robotron 2084	01/06/06
$706,563	141,313	Joust	11/22/05
$697,139	69,714	Puzzle Fighter 2 HD	08/29/07
$653,208	65,321	Soltrio Solitare	05/16/07
$628,760	125,752	Track & Field	08/08/07
$611,875	122,375	Double Dragon	05/09/07
$601,083	60,108	Tetris Splash	10/03/07
$599,596	119,919	Paperboy	02/14/07
$584,320	116,864	Golden Axe	07/11/07
$577,885	57,789	Hexic 2	08/15/07
$552,152	110,430	Sonic the Hedgehog 2	09/12/07
$535,714	107,143	DigDug	11/11/06
$531,589	106,318	Ms. PacMan	01/10/07
$523,463	52,346	Marathon: Durandal	08/01/07
$521,570	104,314	Streets of Rage 2	08/29/07
$445,088	29,673	RoboBlitz	12/06/06
$430,196	86,039	Crystal Quest	02/07/06
$406,821	81,364	Spyglass Board Games	08/01/07
$396,289	79,258	Time Pilot	08/30/06
$369,738	73,948	JetPac Refuled	03/28/07
$338,566	67,713	Root Beer Trapper	02/07/07
$327,106	65,421	Hardwood Backgammon	12/08/05
$323,510	32,351	Band of Bugs	06/20/07
$302,760	30,276	E4	11/17/07
$292,786	58,557	Hardwood Spades	12/08/05
$279,400	27,940	Novadrome	12/20/06
$262,515	26,252	Eets: Chowdown	04/25/07
$201,630	40,326	Scramble	09/13/06
$191,098	19,110	Wing Commander: Arena	07/25/07
$187,715	37,543	Defender	11/15/06
$172,380	34,476	Hardwood Hearts	12/08/05
$171,036	34,207	New Rally X	12/27/06
$169,680	16,968	Speedball 2	10/17/07
$137,871	27,574	Centepede & Millipede	05/02/07
$136,500	13,650	Battlestar Galactica	10/24/07
$127,560	25,512	Fatal Fury Special	09/05/07
$119,611	23,922	Gyruss	04/18/07
$115,019	23,004	Rush'N Attack	05/23/07
$111,691	22,338	Super Contra	07/25/07
$105,738	10,574	StreetTrace: NYC	08/22/07
$104,310	10,431	Mutant Storm Empire	10/31/07
$104,005	20,801	Xevious	05/23/07
$103,770	10,377	Geon: Emotions	09/19/07
$100,444	20,089	Missle Command	07/04/07
$69,864	13,973	Space Giraffe	08/22/07
$67,210	6,721	Exit	11/24/07
$28,830	5,766	Cyberball 2072	09/05/07
$21,010	4,202	Ecco: The Dolphin	07/15/07
$19,260	1,926	Word Puzzle	11/07/07
$19,110	1,911	Switchball	11/07/07
$0	149,682	Yaris	10/10/07
$0	540,207	Aegis Wing	05/16/07

Total Revenue from the following game(s):

$99,192,746.00

Total number of paid downloads:

13,139,714

So there you have it, a fairly accurate look at totals. Mind you, I do believe I have, on average, undertracked these titles so I didn't get too inaccurate.

Having said this, I believe the margin of error is around +/- 5% from the divergence of relativity of sales vs. a particular game. Some games might be more difficult to track, as some titles have more difficult achievements, and therefore are generally harder to see those that actually own the game(s).

And also, I do believe the max the numbers could be higher would be around 20-30% in terms of gross revenue and unit sales.

So how much does a company make from the given revenue? According to articles found on Gamasutra.com, the average XBLA developer gets 70% of the total revenue from the game for a 3rd party title, and 50% if a company gives Microsoft the rights to develop a given IP for download.

Hopefully, in the next few weeks, I can get more information, compare more ranking charts on the XBLA service, and fine-tune these numbers more. These numbers should [b]not[/b] be taken as fact. I am not responsible for being grossly inaccurate, but I do feel that these numbers should show a bit.

32 Comments

princess (on 19 February 2009)

XQ (on 15 October 2008)

lijiale (on 27 September 2008)

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Kai Master (on 12 November 2007)

"weekly top 100 out next Saturday."
Where should we look at to see this chart? On this topic or will it be a news feature?

Kai Master (on 12 November 2007)

That's cool to see my fav XBLAG at #3 (Geometry Wars). So none managed to beat it since its release...

mrstickball (on 09 November 2007)

Woops. I had that on one list, but didn't on the second one. It bombed, however.

It's under $86,000.

Starting tommorow, I will begin compiling data, and hopefully get a weekly top 100 out next Saturday.

sinha (on 09 November 2007)

I just noticed something, Yie Ar Kung Fu is missing! That game may be so bad that nobody bought it.
I wouldn't be surprised if Yie Ar Kung Fu does even worse than Ecco the Dolphin, New Rally X and Hardwood Hearts.

XanderZane (on 09 November 2007)

Most developers who make these games are only expecting to sell 100K-200K copies. Most of the games that sell over 100K copies is going to make at least 1 million. Even if the developers only get 1/2 the profit, that's still a sizeable amount of money for one game that probably only took a year to make by 2-3 people. The good news is that these titles stay on XBox Live Arcade, so they are always up for sale in the future to new XBox 360 owners.

NeoRatt (on 09 November 2007)

This will be great if you can keep it up every week, few weeks, or month.... Nice to see the tracking of a medium that is going to become increasingly important. Hopefully later you can get PSN and VC stuff too.

mrstickball (on 09 November 2007)

sinha, I was going to mention that. The worst non-07 release is Rally-X, which sold an estimated $160,000 (a Namco arcade port from the 80s).

Steve, as said in other posts, the port prices, and new efforts can vary.

Microsoft only really forces developers to add achievements (which would be relatively cheap), and add some sort of vague online function (like routing the high scores to the internet). I wouldn't be suprised if the Arcade ports such as Rally X, or Galaga were under $100,000 USD, as I don't see it taking more than 1 man-year to do such a thing.

So the way it looks for XBLA prices I'd estimate:

$50,000-$150,000 - Simple Arcade Port (leaderboards)
$150,000-$300,000 - Complex Arcade Port (online co-op, ect)
$300,000-$700,000 - Mid-sized new IP
$300,000-$1,500,000 - Console Game Port (high end would be SF2 HD)

I'd assume the bigger games such as War World, Undertow are probably around $1.0m to $1.5m or so.

One of the biggest succuesses right now would be Puzzle Quest - last I had checked, it's made about $400,000 in 2 weeks.

Steve 3.2 (on 09 November 2007)

Thanks for some great information! I, too, wonder what the real cost of development is. On the Wii, developers only need to test that the emulator settings work for their game and tweak them if necessary. On XBLA, MS forces developers to go into the code of older games to update the graphics and add achievements and online modes. While some of the XBLA ports probably only cost around $250K, I bet a few of the original efforts on the list cost up to $1M or more.

sinha (on 09 November 2007)

Notice the bottom 20 games all came out in 2007? Arcade games are all about long legs, I'm sure most of those will end up making lots of money in the long run (but probably not Ecco The Dolphin).

sinha (on 09 November 2007)

Yeah what are the five games included with the new Arcade Xbox?
It'll be interesting to watch them shoot up the charts...

bumidan (on 08 November 2007)

Also note that the New Arcade XBox will have the 5 Free Games with it.

mrstickball (on 08 November 2007)

Golden, I've never seen any Gamasutra data denying anything I've said, mainly in the fact they haven't provided any "top 10" lists in a long, long time.

Last Gamasutra.com had it looked like (as of June, for revenue from Jul 06 to June 07):

1. Street Fighter 2

2. Worms

3. Doom

4. Castlevainia

5. Ultimate MK 3

6. Texas Hold-Em

7. Uno

8. Bankshot Billiards 2

9. Lumnies Live!

10. TMNT 1989

Add in the Xbox Live Unplugged games, the free Texas Hold-Em downloads, and such, and the list I have is pretty accurate minus the freebies.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15117

mrstickball (on 08 November 2007)

shams - Remember, I already stated that its more than likely I undertracked it.

There are no submission costs to XBLA, or anything of that nature. Microsoft takes a flat 30% off each game for all their expinses, as far as I remember, which allows for the ultra-cheap XBLA price.

Overall, the sales aren't "OMG" until you factor in the revenue - which is good considering the vast majority of top-selling games are $10.

goldenpp72 (on 08 November 2007)

Also these numbers are way off from microsofts own reports from before on gamasutra if I recall..

goldenpp72 (on 08 November 2007)

Texas holdem was a free download for some time.

shams (on 08 November 2007)

What is interesting, is the total number. Once you lose freebies / pack-ins - that's not THAT many downloads - averaging around 1 per consumer.

The VC has already 8m downloads - 2 months ago? It might hit the total XBLA sales figure by the end of the year.

Tracking of WiiWare / VC purchases is going to be much harder. Nintendo is smart for keeping all those figures inhouse, and not providing any way of tracking them (like there is on XBLA, etc..)

...

I wonder what the averaging non-development costs for XBLA are? Submission costs and the like? And I wonder what the average development costs are? I heard a figure of around $150k-200kUS (average) for development of a XBLA title. More than 80% of titles are breaking even if that is the case - much better than retail development!

bumidan (on 08 November 2007)

Great Job. I am really interested in XBLA games. I have Astropop, Catan and Heavy Weapon.
Also, maybe you can do research as to how the MSPoints are allocated. For example in Canada - 1400 points retails for $19.99. A portion of that must go to retailer margins and to Microsoft. Therefore Revenue will be much harder to gauge. Because you can also buy MSPoints directly in XBL for a higher cost per point than in Retail. I think in Canada, it is $15.50 for 1000 MSPoints online.

It would be interesting to see what is the breakdown.

Chadius (on 08 November 2007)

Wow, HUGE numbers for minimal development costs.

mrstickball (on 08 November 2007)

Fonz -

Remember, for those 3 titles you listed, the chances are that they might have great legs (as many, many XBLA games do), or the data is incomplete.

For the data, I am using gained achievements to tabulate the sales, as those with achievements bought the game.

Therefore, if you've recently bought the game, but don't have any achievements, your not counted in this list. I have some compensation measures in place for that, but not that huge.

Uno, Texas Hold'Em, and Bankshot Billiards are all pack-ins in various ways. If you checked my XBLA post earlier in the MS forums, I had notations for some of these titles. Expect an update to reflect notes for each title soon.

Having said that, the big winners is Worms, Doom, and SOTN as the top sellers having absolutely no bundles.

Fonzerelli (on 08 November 2007)

@ spam_vt,
first thought that came to my mind, when i saw the sales figures.
Texas Hold'em was a free download for the first 48 hours of its availability.
Uno has been a pack in with 12 month Xbox Live and the Xbox Live Vision Gold package.
Other than Geometry Wars : Retro, most other games seem to taper off once they reach 250K. The best dev's can expect from Xbox Live Arcade is anywhere between 250-300K (a very respectable figure though).
Lots of high profile titles seem to have bombed though,
Wing Commander Arena - 19,110
Battlestar Galactica - 13,650
Space Giraffe - 13,973

Nice to see offbeat games like Boom Boom Rocket, Puzzle Quest: CotW etc.. seem to have done well.

couchmonkey (on 08 November 2007)

Very interesting! It looks like the exact revenue on some of these may be hard to determine, but it's still cool to see the numbers.

spam_vt (on 08 November 2007)

They were giving away Texas Hold'em for free for a while, so the actual revenue for that game is probably much smaller than what is listed. Also, I think a few other games had promotions or bundles (such as Contra with the Old Spice gamerscore challenge.)

choirsoftheeye (on 08 November 2007)

An awful lot people I know seem to do it easily, for it being illegal... Like without any of the sketchiness of p2p.

FreeTalkLive rocks! (on 08 November 2007)

No. Anyway, internet gambling is against the law in America.

ssj12 (on 08 November 2007)

can you gamble in the Texas Holdem game?

WiiStation360 (on 08 November 2007)

Est. Revenue $8,220,190
Est. Units Sold 822,019
Name Texas Hold'em
Released on: 08/23/06

Wasn't Texas Hold'em a free download when it was first released?

ssj12 (on 08 November 2007)

now I wonder about VC and PSN sales.

FreeTalkLive rocks! (on 08 November 2007)

Uno is huge! I wonder how many of these titles will make it to WiiWare.

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More Articles

1. Street Fighter 2

2. Worms

3. Doom

4. Castlevainia

5. Ultimate MK 3

6. Texas Hold-Em

7. Uno

8. Bankshot Billiards 2

9. Lumnies Live!

10. TMNT 1989

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