Microsoft does not offer up official revenue numbers for sales of the downloadable games made for the Xbox 360 and its Xbox Live Arcade service. However, a third party company, Forecasting & Analyzing Digital Entertainment (FADE) has come up with some numbers of its own that it claims show a huge boost in revenues for XBLA game titles.
FADE"s report claims that total sales of those games reached $290 million in 2012, which is double the number in 2011. This shows that downloadable console game sales are on the rise, even as sales of retail disc-based games declined in 2012.
By far, the XBLA game with the most downloads and revenues was the Xbox 360 port of Mojang"s sandbox game Minecraft. FADE said the game, which was ported by 4J Studios, had 4,997,000 downloads with revenues of $97.388 million. A distant second in terms of revenue was Trials Evolution from developer RedLynx and publisher Ubisoft, which made $14.298 million in revenue with 1,002,000 game downloads.
The Walking Dead, from developer Telltale Games, was in third on the list with $10.277 million in revenues and 2,615,000 in total downloads. FADE"s numbers for this game are combined for all five episodes of the episodic series, including free episode downloads.
Source: FADE | Image via Mojang