Straight Cash: Sell Your XNA Games Over Xbox Live

Microsoft made an exciting announcement yesterday, confirming that premium members of the XNA Creators Club will be able to sell their created games through the Xbox Live Marketplace.

The process will be fairly simple: once the game is completed, you’ll submit it through the peer review process and then be able to set a price between 200 and 800 Microsoft points. Once you’ve done that, the game will be listed on Xbox Live and you’ll still reaping the rewards, to the tune of up to 70% of the game’s total revenue, paid quarterly. Successful games might even be advertised, which should help to bring in a pretty penny.

“Not only are we democratizing game development with Xbox LIVE Community Games later this year, but we’re creating an opportunity for aspiring developers to start their careers on the world stage,” said Chris Satchell, CTO of the Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Business Group.. “It is really a win for both developers and consumers because this will no doubt act as an incentive for game creators to continue to develop the best, most innovative games for Xbox 360.”

“Since first launching XNA Game Studio in 2006, we have been working hard on improving the toolset and building resources for the community, and the response has been amazing. To date, we’ve had more than 1 million downloads of XNA Game Studio and adoption in more than 700 universities,” said Boyd Multerer, general manager of XNA. “For some perspective, the incredible creative community we’ve unleashed worldwide is more than 25 times the number of professional developers in the industry.”

There’s no mention if you can release a game for free, though, which really worries me. If the game’s creator wants to release the game for free, let him or her do it — surely hosting a 50MB file isn’t going to wreak havoc on Microsoft.

You can read more about the announcement at the official XNA website.