Although most games released on Microsoft"s Xbox Live Indie Games fail to make any money, there is one rather large exception. That is FortressCraft, a rather blatant copy of the hit PC sandbox game Minecraft. Today FortressCraft"s developer, PropellerGames, announced on the game"s message boards, that FortressCraft has now become the first game released on the Xbox Live Indie Games program to reach and exceed $1 million in revenue.
FortressCraft was released on April 8 and so far PropellerGames says that the game has sold over 350,000 copies. In addition, the game has a very high rate of people who try out the demo and then purchase the game. According to the developer"s stats, 84 percent of people who download and play the FortressCraft demo, go ahead and purchase the full game.
As we have reported before, the Xbox Live Indie Games program, while easy to develop for, has turned out to be a poor way to make money from releasing games for most of the developers who have participated in the program. One developer, Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games, revealed that his two RPG titles, Cthulhu Saves The World and Breath Of Death VII, had made more money in its first week as a PC game via Steam than the game"s first 18 months as Xbox Live Indie Games.
Meanwhile Microsoft has already announced that it is publishing a true Xbox 360 port of Minecraft for release later this year. Details about the Xbox 360 version have yet to be released.