Super Meat Boy was a smash hit on XBLA and Steam, but in a
postmortem for
Game Developer magazine, creator Team Meat voiced some issues it had with Microsoft, namely feeling
SMB was underpromoted, and shouldn’t have been released alongside another game that week (in this case
Costume Quest).
While the latter complaint is explained by the fact that Microsoft’s internal XBLA publishing division doesn’t coordinate with the external XBLA publishing division, the former remains on the table.
At E3, Gamasutra spoke with Ted Woolsey, director of first party publishing for XBLA, to get his thoughts on the situation.
"We really enjoyed working with those guys," said Woolsey. "We saw the brilliance in the game, and we’re happy to have signed it and shipped it on our console first."
"It’s unfortunate that they feel like they weren’t taken care of, but the bottom line is we did the best we could, and they’re a smart team. They’ve got big chops and we’re just looking forward to seeing where they go, and we wish them the best."
Team Meat outlined the trials and tribulations it went through to try to get the game finished on time, working to the point of exhaustion and constantly wanting to quit.
Woolsey doesn’t pretend development is easy. "It’s hard making a game, we know that," he said, "and it’s hard coordinating efforts to get a game to ship on time on a platform et cetera, and we think they did a commendable job. I think they’ll go into some interesting spaces with their next products."
Super Meat Boy is currently available for XBLA and Steam, and has sold more than 600,000 units across those platforms since release.
