It’s no secret that a lot of indie developers have been turning away from Microsofts Xbox Live Indie Games service as a marketplace for their creations. A cluttered storefront and hundreds of seemingly zero-effort shovelware titles drown out what little quality there is, and Microsoft themselves seem to have made only the very most cursory attempts at promoting the store. While there’s no doubt that there are some genuinely great games on XBLIG, it’s hard to pick out the wheat from the chaff. Zeboyd Games was one of the developers to make the jump from 360 to PC via a Steam publishing deal, and now we know just how successful the transition was.

In a press release/blog post today, Robert Boyd spells the facts out: In under 4 months on Steam, parody RPG Cthulhu Saves The World (bundled in with Breath Of Death VII) sold over 100,000 copies. In comparison, CSTW has sold a mere 20k units since December 2010, and Breath Of Death only 55k since April 2010. It’s not hard to see where the money lies. Here’s the word, straight from the horses mouth:

Zeboyd Games is pleased to announce that the Cthulhu Saves the World + Breath of Death VII combo pack ($3) has sold over 100,000 copies on Steam since its release on July 13th, 2011.  This milestone was achieved during the Steam Halloween sale, less than 4 months after the game’s release on Steam.

In contrast, on the XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) service, Zeboyd Games has sold over 20,000 copies of Cthulhu Saves the World (240 MS points = $3) and over 55,000 copies of Breath of Death VII (80 MS points = $1). Cthulhu Saves the World was released in December 2010 on XBLIG and Breath of Death VII was released in April 2010.

We are ecstatic at the amount of success we’ve seen since releasing our games on the PC. The days of worrying over whether or not we could support our families while making games we would want to play ourselves are behind us. Counter-intuitive though it may be, there is obviously a definite audience for quality console-style RPGs that are aggressively priced on the PC.

We are very appreciative of all the support we’ve received from our fans and from Steam and hope to continue making quality games at low prices for you to enjoy for years to come. We are very excited to be working on Rainslick Precipice of Darkness episode 3 in conjunction with Penny Arcade and hope you have a blast with it when it comes out in 2012. And beyond 2012, we have many intriguing ideas for new games that we think you’ll enjoy, both RPGs as well as games from other genres.

The success story seems sure to continue, with Zeboyd gearing up to produce the third (and final?) episode in the Penny Arcade Adventures RPG series, previously abandoned by Hothead Games. The success of CSTW will no doubt provide a strong marketing springboard for their next game, as if being an official Penny Arcade title wasn’t enough of a boost.

[Zeboyd Games]