Fez is easily one of my favourite games of 2012 thus far. As far as we’re aware it has been a decent commercial success for developer Phil Fish and his team, but speaking at a Nordic Game Conference, Fish claimed that the strung out development cycle of Fez may have hurt sales in the long term.
“The fact that the game took so long to come out I think ultimately hurt it,” he said, as reported by GamesIndustry International. “I think it would have done better if it had come out two or three years ago rather than now, because things are kind of slowing down on Xbox Live Arcade – it’s the end of that life-cycle.”
As the opening years of the Xbox 360’s launch, the LIVE Arcade section seemed to be a huge priority for Microsoft, but now it feels as though it’s almost being buried beneath the sheer weight of Microsoft’s media center aspirations. When I bought Fez I genuinely had difficulty finding where the game was, and where I had to go to find it. The Xbox 360’s new user interface clearly isn’t making indie gaming a priority in the same way it did in years previous.
It’s a shame because — genuinely — Fez is one of the best games available on the LIVE arcade service, and it deserves a bigger audience.
Phil Fish: Long dev cycle hurt Fez sales [GamesIndustryBiz]
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