E-commercifully finished

Its been about a week since we released World Clock 360 on the PC

Since then I've trawled the internet for every software download site I could possibly find so I could upload our app. Over forty sites later and my fingers are numb, my eyes are bleeding and I have an uncontrollable urge to "just find one more".

But I'm not going to. I'm stopping now. Its been a week of learning and of trying new things. Setting up our e-commerce site with Plimus. Making a PAD file (don't ask). Not to mention trying to reacquaint myself with html, so I can add all the tacky little banners and buttons that most of these websites insist I display on our site, in stilted, russian-accented english. Otherwise they won't accept our software. Its a bit odd how it all works.

During this time Alexa has been my one and only true friend. Its a great tool that lets me establish how popular each of these download sites actually is. That way I know how much effort (see ass-kissing) I need to put into getting our software uploaded. For example:

http://www.download.com is rated the 147th most popular website in the whole of the internet. = lots of effort for those guys.

Contrast that with http://www.safefreedownloads.com at 1,620,049. So, not so much.

Anyway, World Clock 360 is in the hands of the gods now. It was a fun 2 month project but now we have to abandon it and hope people find it amidst the vast hordes of mediocrity that make up the majority of the PC downloadable software market.

Now its time to move onto bigger and better things. Time to make some games.

Strictly business

Its a very nice feeling knowing that hundreds of people, most of whom I've never met (and probably never will meet) took a look at World Clock on the Xbox 360 and decided to to lay down their $2.50 for the privilege of owning it.

A very nice feeling indeed.

Is it going to make me rich? Has it sold as much as I was hoping for (although lets face it, its only been available for a week)? Is Xbox Community Games the gateway to a treasure house of riches in a similar way to the much hyped iPhone app store? No, no and no. But am I bitter? No, not at all. Because the kick I'm getting out of knowing that those people 'got' World Clock is more meaningful to me than any of the millions (literally) of customers who have played any of the various games I've worked on in the past.

Understanding why isn't difficult. The World Clock is the only product I've been involved with that I can safely claim is 90% mine. Rather than being one of many little worker ants in a huge company, now its personal. And I absolutely love it.

World Clock took 6 weeks from idea to release. In a large company it might take 6 weeks to organise a meeting! :) Our products are only going to get bigger and better, but never unwieldy and always personal.

This is the future of development. This is my future.

A triple news sandwich

Yep, I know its been ages. But boy have we been busy!

Lets see, Atomhex isn't released yet. We've had a few big publishers interested in signing it up and releasing it properly on Xbox Live Arcade so we are holding it back from the Xbox Indie Games channel for now to see what happens on that front.

Our Xbox360 port of Platypus, a fantastic game, all the graphics made exclusively in clay, is our next announced project. Again, we are in talks with publishers to get it onto XBLA so I'll let you know how that goes. Either way, expect to be playing it with a friend (and stealing all their powerups) later this year on your Xbox360.

And finally, we've just released The World Clock for the Xbox360, a little app that shows you what the time is all over the world in a very pleasing graphical way. Its a very polished little piece of software and well worth a look. You can find it in the Indie Games category.

See I told you we've been busy! :)

Chris