Over at his blog, Garage Games' Jeff Tunnell has been expounding in detail on XBLA financing, with some particularly interesting results.

Firstly, he notes: "Creating an XBLA game is taking most studios 6-12 months. Costs are currently ranging from $100,000 to $300,000... The industry standard arms race will quickly make the top end $300,000 budget a cheap product. Right now, I wouldn’t consider attempting to make an XBLA game with a $100,000 budget... I can’t give the exact figure, but the Marble Blast Ultra budget was at the higher end of the current budget range."

More stats? If Marble Blast Ultra hypothetically sold about 120k unites: "So, 120,000 units * $10 per unit = $1.2MM... Remember, Microsoft should make something for making this cool distribution channel available, and they do take a cut. The publicly available information on this is that the distribution fees for bringing a game to XBLA is 35-70% depending upon participation by MS, i.e. the publisher gets 30-65% of the money collected for game sales."

Therefore: "Let’s say you are a publisher or a developer that is able to fund your own development, so, a $10 game (800 Gamer Points) would net you $6.50, or 120,000 units * $6.50 per unit = $780,000." Good info, here. [Via Edge Online.]