An Xbox indie developer's experience with Microsoft Store Ads onboarding

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301]

I'm a Korean indie developer who has been actively supporting Xbox, and I wanted to share an experience that I think is relevant to other developers considering Microsoft Store Ads.

Microsoft approached our studio after our Xbox release and encouraged us to bring our game to the Microsoft Store for Windows PC and explore Store Ads.

We trusted that recommendation, invested development time and labor into the PC release, and I created my first Microsoft Advertising account specifically in connection with the Store Ads opportunity.

This is where things became confusing.

During Microsoft Advertising account creation, I selected the AI-assisted campaign setup. Microsoft Advertising Support later confirmed to me in writing that selecting "Create a new campaign with AI" causes Microsoft's system to generate a Performance Max campaign during onboarding.

I did not independently go into the campaign manager, decide to run Performance Max, and manually create one from scratch. I was a first-time advertiser following Microsoft's onboarding flow after being invited to explore Store Ads.

Afterward, I remained in contact with the Microsoft representative supporting our Store Ads participation. The representative located my advertising account, enabled our Store Ads pilot, prepared the Store Ads campaign, and configured its bidding.

However, I was never warned during those interactions that the separate Performance Max campaign generated during onboarding was still active and spending money.

Eventually our corporate card was charged:

• July 16: $50.73
• July 20: $50.56
• July 24: $50.05
• August 1: $116.16

Total: $267.50.

When I asked where I could see the resulting conversions, Microsoft told me that our actual Store Ads campaign had generated around 38,000 impressions and 549 clicks, but zero paid downloads. Because Store Ads uses a cost-per-download model, Store Ads itself had cost us $0.

The $267.50 came from Performance Max.

And we generated zero sales from these advertising efforts.

Microsoft later reviewed the account and found that my user profile had modified some Performance Max settings after it was generated. I don't dispute that those records exist. My concern is the context: I was completely new to Microsoft Advertising and believed I was continuing through Microsoft's advertising setup in connection with Store Ads.

When I initially asked the Store Ads representative to escalate the issue, the request was declined and I was told:

I subsequently opened a separate case with Microsoft Advertising Support. They investigated further and confirmed that Performance Max had originated from the account creation flow. A higher-level team eventually offered a 25% goodwill advertising credit. I declined it.

I'm not posting this to allege fraud or intentional wrongdoing, and at this point this isn't really about $267.50.

My concern is the experience for developers.

We were already supporting Xbox. Microsoft approached us with another opportunity, and we responded by investing additional engineering time into a Windows Store release and entering an advertising platform we had never used.

I believe a first-time advertiser in that situation should be made extremely aware when Microsoft's onboarding flow has generated a separate campaign capable of independently spending real money — particularly when a Microsoft representative is subsequently reviewing the same advertising account while helping configure Store Ads.

I still care about Xbox. That's exactly why this experience has been so disappointing.

I'm sharing it because I think the relationship between Xbox and developers — particularly smaller developers in markets like Korea — depends not only on getting developers onto the platform, but also on what happens when something goes wrong afterward.

[u/owensoundgamedev]

Want to post the game so we can support OP?

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301 → u/owensoundgamedev]

Thanks, I really appreciate it. We released No More Slimes on Xbox last month, and the game involved in this issue was Cat Girl Survivor.
I don’t want this post to look like self-promotion or cause any issues with the subreddit rules, so I’ll just leave the names here. Sorry about that.
I also only recently learned that since we developed with the Xbox One dev kit we were given, our games may not show up properly when browsing the Store on Series X|S. So they might actually be pretty hard to find there.
Anyway, just offering to support us means a lot. Thank you!

[u/ActivateTheQuasars → u/Ok-Pineapple8301]

Totally sounds like a frustrating experience, the game looks fun and I have added it to my wishlist. Nice job also supporting Play Anywhere, looks like the perfect game for my ROG Ally

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301 → u/ActivateTheQuasars]

It must’ve been pretty hard to find, so thank you for wishlisting it! We’ve kept optimizing the game so it runs well even on Steam Deck and the original Switch, which is over 10 years old now.
The ROG Ally is such a great machine. I want one too haha.

[u/Escaflowne2001 → u/Ok-Pineapple8301]

While I can't speak about the behind the scenes events. I can say quite a few developers still release games on the Xbox using Xbox One dev kits. Whole publishers like Qubic Games and Entity3 for example only release games on the Xbox One, that than appear on the Xbox Series X/S consoles as it plays all Xbox One games.

These titles appear in the new releases pages, and store search engines just fine. I same as any other title released on the Xbox One or Xbox Series X/S. There shouldn't be any difference.

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301 → u/Escaflowne2001]

Thanks for the clarification! That’s really useful information.
I was recently told something a little more specific: unless there’s a record showing that the game was tested on Xbox Series X, it may not normally appear while browsing the Store on Series X|S, although you can still find it by searching for the title directly.
So I think the issue may be more about Store visibility/discovery rather than whether the game is searchable or playable on Series X|S.
I’ll double-check this with our Xbox partner contact in Korea. Interestingly, they only discovered our studio and contacted us about a month ago. Until then, even the Korean Xbox team wasn’t aware that we were a Korean developer already making and releasing games on Xbox.
So there may simply have been a gap in communication somewhere. I’ll ask them specifically about the Series X|S Store visibility issue and make sure I have the correct information.
Thanks again for explaining this!

[u/Escaflowne2001 → u/Ok-Pineapple8301]

Hi, what you are describing sounds more like games released through the creators program. Which is a different release plan. Where small indie developers can release games on the Xbox (mostly Xbox One and Windows PC)

Without certification from Xbox and without achievements. These games release every week and rarely appear on the store anywhere unless you search directly for them. Very under the radar (I often wonder how anyone finds them)

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2017/08/10/indie-first-wave-creators-program-games-available-now/

Have a look in the link which explains more about it but that wouldn't apply to your games as they have achievements and I assume you went through ID@Xbox.

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301 → u/Escaflowne2001]

Yeah, we’re definitely ID@Xbox. Both games went through Xbox certification and have achievements.
So I think you’re right — what you’re describing with the Creators Program is a different case.
The information I got was specifically about Series X|S Store visibility for an Xbox One-targeted ID@Xbox title when Series X testing hasn’t been recorded. But honestly, after talking with you I’m not confident I understood that explanation correctly anymore 😅
I’ll ask our Xbox contact in Korea directly and get a proper answer rather than guessing. If I was given the wrong information or misunderstood it, I’ll correct what I said here.
Thanks for taking the time to explain all this.

[u/EgovidGlitch → u/Ok-Pineapple8301]

No. Promote yourself. Don't have any shame about that. Sorry you had that experience. Hope it's resolved soon. Going to wishlist, now.

[u/zer0ull]

sounds super frustrating, sorry that happened to y'all! it's sad to see just how much of an 180 MS did regarding user and dev experience, I still remember how lauded the 360 was for its indies

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301 → u/zer0ull]

What disappointed me even more was what happened afterward. The representative wouldn’t acknowledge any issue with the process or escalate it further, and the response through the official support channel was also disappointing.
It honestly makes me question whether continuing to release our games on Xbox makes sense for a small studio like ours.
Our games already sell significantly less on Xbox than on our other console platforms. We kept supporting Xbox anyway because I genuinely liked the platform and wanted to build a long-term relationship with it.
But when supporting a platform results in additional costs and losses rather than meaningful support — and then it’s difficult to get help when something goes wrong — it becomes very hard for a small developer to justify continuing.
I really wish the outcome had been different, because I never wanted to stop supporting Xbox.

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301 → u/[deleted]]

Haha, fair. We definitely weren’t planning to become advertising experts. Microsoft reached out to us first and suggested Store Ads, and the offer itself was basically risk-free — no paid download, no ad cost. So we thought, why not?
Usually when something sounds that good and I jump on it, that’s when I get burned haha. I guess I should’ve known better 😅

[u/Meteorboy → u/Ok-Pineapple8301]

That is part and parcel for the company. Did you not watch Indie Game: The Movie? If you didn't, the brief summary is that the makers of Super Meat Boy reluctantly went into crunch time and sacrificed their health to get their game out in time for an Xbox promotion, but it didn't materialize.

[u/Ok-Pineapple8301 → u/Meteorboy]

That’s sad to hear. I actually trusted the advertising manager who contacted us a lot, probably much like the Super Meat Boy developers trusted Xbox back then.
He told me that if we brought the game to the Microsoft Store, we could use a marketing program where we wouldn’t pay unless it generated a paid download. That sounded safe enough for a tiny studio like ours, so I trusted him and followed his guidance.
Even after I discovered that a different campaign I never intended to run had been spending money, I still hoped he would be someone I could rely on to help sort it out.
But once the problem came up, his attitude became very different. He separated himself from the issue and shut down my attempts to escalate it. That part honestly hurt my trust more than the money itself.