Improvements I'd like to see to Xbox Live Indie Games
Having actively worked with XNA, released one game to Xbox Live Indie Games, and being on the verge of releasing a second game, there are a few things I would like to see improved with the service and underlying XNA framework. My games thus far have been 2D and haven't really pushed the limits of what XNA or the Xbox can do, so most of the improvements I'm going to mention won't be all that performance/technical related.
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Leaderboards and Achievements
These two items are the obvious ones that nearly all XBLIG developers have been clamoring for. Not having them puts XBLIG developers at a disadvantage to XBLA games. That's all I'm going to say because this is a topic that has been discussed so much already.
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Videos / Trailers
Currently when you submit a game for play test or review, you can also link to a YouTube trailer of said game. Other developers can view these trailers when deciding if they want to review or play test your game. These trailers though are not viewable from the Xbox Live Marketplace or on the Xbox itself. They should be. It would really help to show off games, many times screenshots don't really do a game justice.
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More Frequent Price Changes
Currently you can change an XBLIG's price only once every three months. This is way too long. For Nasty, I could have told you it was priced wrong from the first couple days on the Marketplace, and yet it took months before I could adjust. Considering that sales have been 10 times better since adjusting the price, the fact that I had to stay on the old price for three months cost me a serious amount of revenue, sales, and likely a lower rating from gamers who didn't feel the game was worth the price (FYI, it is worth the price). This also hurts gamers (those who bought the game back then paid five times more than now and others that would have liked to play the game but didn't want to pay the price obviously didn't play the game).
Allowing more frequent price changes would also allow you to do short term promotions... for instance, if my game were normally priced at 240 MS Points, I could do a week long promotion at 80 MS Points. One of the hardest things to do with an XBLIG is to promote it and by not allowing quickly adjustable prices, Microsoft has closed a very important promotional avenue.
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Easier Updates
If you have an update to your game, you have to go through the entire review process over again... even if your update is limited to a simple spelling error correction. The XBLIG review queue is full of games and takes a week or two for a game to pass. By forcing a full review for a game that has already passed review, you're bogging down this process even more. A game that is already on the Marketplace has shown itself to work. Obviously some regression testing is necessary (in addition to testing the new changes), but Microsoft should lessen the number of review approvals that a pre-existing game needs to pass review. There are several small updates I'd like to do for Nasty, but I avoid doing them so that I don't trouble reviewers and delay the releases of other games that truly need a full review.
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7 Day Review Fail Penalty
I understand that this was implemented by people taking advantage of the review system, but I believe this rule needs some tweaking (or complete removal). In a number of instances, developers have opted to release games that had small bugs / gameplay issues in order to avoid the 7 day penalty incurred when a game in review fails or is manually removed. This leads to games making it to the Marketplace that have known errors / problems and often leads to these same games being put back in review shortly afterward to fix these problems. This leads to a worse product for gamers and more review time for the game (assuming it gets fixed at all).
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